Research
On-device research index

arXiv research

A locally-built, LLM-digested index of recent arXiv papers in quant finance, geometry/topology, and statistical ML — keyword search served straight from SQLite on this machine.

168,695 papers · 148 categories

Trend · papers per month

77155232309 · Jun 202019922001200920172026
48 results for first-order convergence

This paper analyzes convergence of RMSProp and Adam in non-convex optimization with tight complexity bounds.

problem Analyzing convergence of RMSProp and Adam in non-convex optimization with relaxed assumptions.
method Developed new convergence analyses for RMSProp and Adam, considering adaptive learning rates and affine noise variance.
result RMSProp and Adam converge to ε-stationary points with iteration complexities of O(ε^(-4)) under proper hyperparameters.

First-order method solves stochastic bilevel optimization with linear constraints.

problem Stochastic bilevel optimization with linear constraints and noise.
method Developed a novel framework using gradient-based techniques and smoothed penalty functions.
result Achieved finite-time convergence guarantees for (δ,ε)(δ, ε)-Goldstein stationary points.

First order methods can take extremely long to find global minima of non-convex functions.

problem Finding global minimizers of non-convex functions.
method Designing a family of non-convex functions and using statistical lower bounds for parameter estimation.
result First order methods can take exponential time to converge to a global minimizer.

Many problems in machine learning and game theory can be formulated as saddle-point problems, for which various first-order methods have been developed and proven efficient in practice. Under the general convex-concave assumption, most first-order methods only guarantee an ergodic convergence rate, that is, the uniform…

2019-03-26abs ↗pdf ↗

Unified analysis of first-order methods for smooth games using IQCs.

problem Certify convergence rates of first-order methods for smooth and strongly-monotone games.
method Adapted integral quadratic constraints (IQCs) to study first-order methods and derive tight upper bounds of convergence rates.
result First global convergence rate for the negative momentum method with O(κ1.5)\mathcal{O}(κ^{1.5}) iteration complexity.

New method accelerates convergence for entropy-regularized reinforcement learning problems.

problem Slow convergence of standard first-order methods for entropy-regularized Markov decision processes.
method Introduce a quadratically convexified primal-dual formulation and a new interpolating metric to accelerate convergence.
result Global convergence and exponential convergence rate for the new method.

Computing Nash equilibrium (NE) of multi-player games has witnessed renewed interest due to recent advances in generative adversarial networks. However, computing equilibrium efficiently is challenging. To this end, we introduce the Gradient-based Nikaido-Isoda (GNI) function which serves: (i) as a merit function, vani…

2019-05-15abs ↗pdf ↗

The paper analyzes reinforcement learning methods for estimating weights and quality functions with fast convergence rates.

problem Estimating weights and quality functions in reinforcement learning with function approximation.
method The paper uses minimax methods for estimating marginal importance weights and q-functions.
result The minimax approach enables fast rates of convergence for weights and quality functions, achieving first-order efficiency.

Unified framework for analyzing batch updating methods with noisy gradients.

problem Analyzing convergence of batch updating methods with noisy gradients and approximations.
method Unified framework using convergence of stochastic processes.
result Establishes a general theorem for most known convergence results.

We propose a family of optimization methods that achieve linear convergence using first-order gradient information and constant step sizes on a class of convex functions much larger than the smooth and strongly convex ones. This larger class includes functions whose second derivatives may be singular or unbounded at th…

2018-09-13abs ↗pdf ↗

New algorithm guarantees optimal convergence rate for stochastic optimization.

problem Optimal convergence rate for stochastic optimization algorithms.
method Regularized versions of Minimization by Incremental Surrogate Optimization (MISO) with arbitrary recurrent data sampling.
result Expected optimality gap converges at O(n1/2)O(n^{-1/2}) under general recurrent sampling schemes.

Develops first-order methods for average-reward MDPs with strong guarantees.

problem Lack of strong theoretical guarantees for first-order methods in AMDPs.
method Average-reward stochastic policy mirror descent (SPMD) and variance-reduced temporal difference (VRTD) methods.
result Establishes sample complexity results for solving AMDPs.

Develops a first-order interior-point method for solving constrained variational inequalities.

problem Solving constrained variational inequalities with nontrivial constraints.
method ADMM-based interior-point method for constrained VIs (ACVI).
result First-order interior-point method with global convergence guarantees for general cVI problems.

New insights into convergence and accuracy trade-offs in federated and meta-learning.

problem Understanding the trade-offs between convergence and accuracy in federated and meta-learning.
method Generalized local update methods, proving equivalence to first-order optimization on a surrogate loss.
result Novel convergence rates and insights into the importance of algorithmic choices in communication-limited settings.

Derives FACT, an alternative to NFA for neural networks, explaining feature learning.

problem Understanding how neural networks learn representations.
method First-principles approach using first-order optimality conditions.
result FACT explains why NFA holds and provides a principled alternative.

BMM algorithm improves convergence for nonconvex optimization problems.

problem Constrained nonsmooth nonconvex optimization problems.
method Block majorization-minimization with diminishing radius.
result Improved convergence rate for nonconvex optimization problems.

Gradient descent finds global optima in ResNets with sufficient parameters.

problem Finding optimal parameters in ResNet models.
method Mean-field analysis and gradient-flow PDE to study convergence of first-order optimization methods.
result First-order methods can find global minimizers in overparameterized ResNets.

New ODE models show saddle-point optimization methods converge differently, with last-iterate convergence for OGDA.

problem Analyzing convergence properties of saddle-point optimization methods.
method High-Resolution Differential Equations (HRDEs) to design differential equation models for saddle-point optimization methods.
result HRDEs reveal last-iterate convergence for Optimistic Gradient Descent Ascent (OGDA) in bilinear games.

In this paper, we study optimization methods consisting of iteratively minimizing surrogates of an objective function. By proposing several algorithmic variants and simple convergence analyses, we make two main contributions. First, we provide a unified viewpoint for several first-order optimization techniques such as …

2013-05-14abs ↗pdf ↗

SP-NGD improves deep learning models' generalization with large mini-batch sizes.

problem Worse generalization performance with large mini-batch sizes in deep learning.
method SP-NGD, a natural gradient descent approach for large-scale deep learning.
result SP-NGD achieves similar generalization performance to first-order methods with accelerated convergence and negligible overhead.

Geodesic convexity generalizes the notion of (vector space) convexity to nonlinear metric spaces. But unlike convex optimization, geodesically convex (g-convex) optimization is much less developed. In this paper we contribute to the understanding of g-convex optimization by developing iteration complexity analysis for …

2016-02-19abs ↗pdf ↗

A new algorithm for solving constrained convex optimization problems efficiently.

problem Constrained convex optimization problems requiring high accuracy solutions.
method Second-Order Conditional Gradient Sliding (SOCGS) algorithm, using projection-free methods to solve quadratic subproblems inexactly.
result Converges quadratically in primal gap after a finite number of linearly convergent iterations.

A new algorithm for decentralized optimization over directed graphs.

problem Decentralized stochastic optimization over directed networks.
method Gradient tracking and S-ADDOPT algorithm with constant and decaying step-sizes.
result S-ADDOPT converges linearly with constant step-size and sublinearly with decaying step-size.

In this work we introduce a conditional accelerated lazy stochastic gradient descent algorithm with optimal number of calls to a stochastic first-order oracle and convergence rate O(1ε2)O\left(\frac{1}{\varepsilon^2}\right) improving over the projection-free, Online Frank-Wolfe based stochastic gradient descent of Hazan an…

2017-03-16abs ↗pdf ↗

New RL algorithms learn policies competitive with best in class without assuming optimal policy.

problem Agnostic RL where best policy not necessarily optimal.
method First-order optimization in non-Euclidean space, reducing to policy learning.
result Sample complexity upper bounds for three algorithms under VGD condition.

A new first-order sampler improves diffusion probabilistic model sampling quality.

problem The belief that first-order methods are inherently slower for diffusion probabilistic model sampling.
method A novel training-free, first-order sampler that approximates the forward-value evaluation via a one-step lookahead predictor.
result The proposed sampler provably approximates the ideal forward-value trajectory while retaining first-order convergence and can improve sample quality under the same NFE budget.

LMC algorithm converges to target in Chi-squared and Renyi divergence.

problem Sampling from target distribution using LMC with strong dissipativity and smoothness conditions.
method LMC algorithm with strong dissipativity and first-order smoothness, initialized with Gaussian.
result LMC reaches ε-neighborhood of target in Chi-squared and Renyi divergence in O(λ²dε⁻¹) steps.