Stochastic variance-reduced gradient (SVRG) is an optimization method originally designed for tackling machine learning problems with a finite sum structure. SVRG was later shown to work for policy evaluation, a problem in reinforcement learning in which one aims to estimate the value function of a given policy. SVRG m…
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48 results for “gradient evaluations”
In this paper we study the problem of minimizing the average of a large number () of smooth convex loss functions. We propose a new method, S2GD (Semi-Stochastic Gradient Descent), which runs for one or several epochs in each of which a single full gradient and a random number of stochastic gradients is computed, fo…
A new method for faster multi-objective optimization by evaluating objectives separately.
problem Finding the Pareto front of trade-offs between multiple objectives efficiently.
method Knowledge Gradient with decoupled evaluations, accounting for different costs.
result The method significantly outperforms existing approaches in terms of evaluation cost.
A new hybrid algorithm reduces stochastic gradient evaluations for nonconvex optimization.
problem Solving stochastic composite nonconvex optimization problems efficiently.
method Proposes a new hybrid variance-reduced proximal gradient method with a stochastic gradient estimator.
result Achieves optimal stochastic oracle complexity bound with one less gradient evaluation.
Paper introduces a new multi-kernel algorithm for better gradient approximation.
problem Improving gradient approximation in high-dimensional problems.
method Develops a multi-kernel passive stochastic gradient algorithm with variance reduction.
result The multi-kernel algorithm performs better in high-dimensional problems.
Improves gradient estimation for discrete distributions with variance reduction techniques.
problem Excessive variance in gradient estimation for discrete distributions.
method Stein operators for discrete distributions and control variates.
result Substantially lower variance in gradient estimation.
This paper evaluates and compares gradient leakage attacks in federated learning.
problem Gradient leakage attacks compromise client privacy in federated learning.
method Formal and experimental analysis of gradient leakage attacks, evaluation of attack effectiveness and cost.
result Gradient leakage attacks can reconstruct private local training data from shared parameter updates.
A new method for optimizing black-box problems with constraints.
problem Optimizing black-box systems with multiple performance criteria and constraints.
method Developed a novel constrained Bayesian optimization approach based on the knowledge gradient method.
result A new acquisition function that balances optimality and feasibility.
Paper extends knowledge gradient for preferential BO, overcoming computational challenges.
problem Extending knowledge gradient to preferential BO with pairwise comparisons.
method Derive exact and analytical knowledge gradient for preferential BO.
result Exact knowledge gradient outperforms existing acquisition functions on benchmark problems.
In many applications of black-box optimization, one can evaluate multiple points simultaneously, e.g. when evaluating the performances of several different neural network architectures in a parallel computing environment. In this paper, we develop a novel batch Bayesian optimization algorithm --- the parallel knowledge…
RevDEQs improve performance on tasks with exact gradients and fewer function evaluations.
problem Inexact gradient calculation in DEQs leads to unstable training and requires regularisation or many function evaluations.
method Introduce Reversible Deep Equilibrium Models (RevDEQs) that allow for exact gradient calculation, no regularisation, and far fewer function evaluations.
result RevDEQs significantly improve performance on language modelling and image classification tasks.
uHMC achieves fast mixing in high dimensions with gradient evaluations.
problem Quantifying mixing time of uHMC in high dimensions.
method Construction of successful couplings for uHMC.
result uHMC mixes in total variation with logarithmic dependence on dimension.
Discretizations of Langevin diffusions provide a powerful method for sampling and Bayesian inference. However, such discretizations require evaluation of the gradient of the potential function. In several real-world scenarios, obtaining gradient evaluations might either be computationally expensive, or simply impossibl…
This paper introduces a new method to evaluate multiple policies simultaneously.
problem Estimating the value of many policies for a single set of states.
method Developed a scalable, differentiable fingerprinting mechanism to represent complex policies.
result The method can produce policies that outperform those that generated the training data, in zero-shot manner.
Reliability Analysis of Complex Systems using Subset Simulations with Hamiltonian Neural Networksstat.ML
New method combines neural networks with Monte Carlo for complex system reliability.
problem Estimating small failure probabilities in complex systems.
method Subset Simulation with Hamiltonian Neural Networks.
result High acceptance rates and computational efficiency in low-probability regions.
This paper reviews zeroth-order optimization in signal processing and machine learning.
problem Optimization problems without gradient information.
method Iterative steps: gradient estimation, descent direction computation, solution update.
result Demonstrates applications in robustness evaluation and black-box model explanations.
Throughout the past five years, the susceptibility of neural networks to minimal adversarial perturbations has moved from a peculiar phenomenon to a core issue in Deep Learning. Despite much attention, however, progress towards more robust models is significantly impaired by the difficulty of evaluating the robustness …
We consider in this paper a class of composite optimization problems whose objective function is given by the summation of a general smooth and nonsmooth component, together with a relatively simple nonsmooth term. We present a new class of first-order methods, namely the gradient sliding algorithms, which can skip the…
PGD-trained models have a preferential direction in their gradients, which improves robustness.
problem Mathematical lack of clarity in the direction of preferential gradient alignment after adversarial training.
method Proposed a novel definition of preferential direction and evaluated it using a metric based on GANs.
result PGD-trained models have higher alignment with the proposed preferential direction than baseline models.
We study the problem of off-policy critic evaluation in several variants of value-based off-policy actor-critic algorithms. Off-policy actor-critic algorithms require an off-policy critic evaluation step, to estimate the value of the new policy after every policy gradient update. Despite enormous success of off-policy …
Feedback alignment methods need to be evaluated for accuracy and gradient cosine similarity.
problem Evaluating feedback alignment methods
method Proposed diagnostic evaluation protocol
result Identified silent failures in standard reporting pair
We consider parallel global optimization of derivative-free expensive-to-evaluate functions, and propose an efficient method based on stochastic approximation for implementing a conceptual Bayesian optimization algorithm proposed by Ginsbourger et al. (2007). At the heart of this algorithm is maximizing the information…
TERA method speeds up derivative Gaussian processes in high dimensions.
problem High-dimensional function evaluations and gradient computations are computationally expensive.
method TERA uses exact gradient reduction to decouple and from the computational cost.
result TERA achieves state-of-the-art predictive accuracy with orders of magnitude faster computation.
Recently, some works have suggested methods to combine variational probabilistic inference with Monte Carlo sampling. One promising approach is via local optimal transport. In this approach, a gradient steepest descent method based on local optimal transport principles is formulated to transform deterministically point…
We present a unified framework to analyze the global convergence of Langevin dynamics based algorithms for nonconvex finite-sum optimization with component functions. At the core of our analysis is a direct analysis of the ergodicity of the numerical approximations to Langevin dynamics, which leads to faster conver…
This paper aims at achieving a "good" estimator for the gradient of a function on a high-dimensional space. Often such functions are not sensitive in all coordinates and the gradient of the function is almost sparse. We propose a method for gradient estimation that combines ideas from Spall's Simultaneous Perturbation …
This paper evaluates algorithms for classification and outlier detection accuracies in temporal data. We focus on algorithms that train and classify rapidly and can be used for systems that need to incorporate new data regularly. Hence, we compare the accuracy of six fast algorithms using a range of well-known time-ser…
We study the problem of off-policy policy optimization in Markov decision processes, and develop a novel off-policy policy gradient method. Prior off-policy policy gradient approaches have generally ignored the mismatch between the distribution of states visited under the behavior policy used to collect data, and what …
Gradient filters track moving parameters under noisy data and misspecification.
problem Tracking multidimensional time-varying parameters under noisy observations and model misspecification.
method Gradient-based filters update parameters using the gradient of a postulated objective function, evaluated at either the predicted or updated parameters.
result Novel sufficient conditions for exponential stability of the filtered parameter path, and finite-sample and asymptotic mean squared error bounds.
New method speeds up PGD for CV robustness evaluation.
problem Computational inefficiency of PGD for robustness evaluation.
method Early termination of PGD based on cycle detection.
result Large speedup factors without sacrificing robustness.
Improved convergence for non-log-concave sampling.
problem Sampling from non-log-concave distributions.
method Novel conductance analysis of SGLD with auxiliary Markov Chain.
result SGLD achieves ε-sampling error with fewer evaluations.
Sequence generation models are commonly refined with reinforcement learning over user-defined metrics. However, high gradient variance hinders the practical use of this method. To stabilize this method, we adapt to contextual generation of categorical sequences a policy gradient estimator, which evaluates a set of corr…
Enhances optimization and sampling methods using ensemble-based gradient inference.
problem Improving ensemble-based methods for optimization and sampling.
method Ensemble-based gradient inference (EGI) to extract higher-order derivatives from particle ensembles.
result Augmented algorithms outperform gradient-free variants, especially in multimodal and non-Gaussian settings.
We show that on-policy policy gradient (PG) and its variance reduction variants can be derived by taking finite difference of function evaluations supplied by estimators from the importance sampling (IS) family for off-policy evaluation (OPE). Starting from the doubly robust (DR) estimator (Jiang & Li, 2016), we provid…
Optimizes function networks by selectively evaluating parts of the network, reducing costs.
problem Optimizing expensive function networks where full evaluations are costly.
method Knowledge gradient acquisition function for cost-aware partial evaluations.
result Outperforms existing BOFN methods and benchmarks across various problems.
Enhanced visual feature attribution via adaptive baseline weighting.
problem IG's sensitivity to baseline images leads to noisy or unstable explanations.
method Weighted Integrated Gradients (WG) evaluates and weights baselines for improved reliability.
result WG improves over Expected Gradients (EG) by up to 36% across various models.
ZDPG learns model-free policies without critics, improving on PG.
problem Model-free policy learning in complex dynamic problems.
method Approximates policy-reward gradients via two-point stochastic evaluations of the Q-function.
result Restores true model-free policy learning without critics, with improved stability and efficiency.
Unbiased method for Bayesian posterior means using kinetic Langevin dynamics.
problem Estimating Bayesian posterior means efficiently and accurately.
method Combines advanced splitting methods with enhanced gradient approximations in a multilevel Monte Carlo approach.
result The method achieves unbiased estimates with finite variance and central limit theorem properties.
AdaSVRG combines adaptive gradient with SVRG for robust optimization.
problem Variance reduction in finite-sum minimization with unknown constants.
method AdaSVRG uses AdaGrad in SVRG's inner loop to make it robust.
result AdaSVRG achieves optimal gradient evaluations with no need for problem-dependent constants.
Develops gradient boosting for multi-label classification.
problem Lack of customizable learning algorithms for multi-label classification.
method Generalizes gradient boosting to multi-output problems and proposes an algorithm for learning multi-label classification rules.
result Ability to minimize both decomposable and non-decomposable loss functions.
Generates multimodal safety-critical scenarios for robustness evaluation of decision-making algorithms.
problem Lack of comprehensive evaluation of neural network robustness under real-world scenarios.
method Proposes a flow-based multimodal scenario generator using weighted likelihood maximization and gradient-based sampling.
result Demonstrates improved testing efficiency and multimodal modeling capability compared to traditional methods.
Task-specific scores are often used to optimize for and evaluate the performance of conditional text generation systems. However, such scores are non-differentiable and cannot be used in the standard supervised learning paradigm. Hence, policy gradient methods are used since the gradient can be computed without requiri…
Backpropagation and the chain rule of derivatives have been prominent; however, the total derivative rule has not enjoyed the same amount of attention. In this work we show how the total derivative rule leads to an intuitive visual framework for creating gradient estimators on graphical models. In particular, previous …
ICCNLS models complex relationships as convex and concave components.
problem Complex input-output relationships with affine ambiguity.
method Sub-gradient constrained affine functions, global orthogonality constraints, L1, L2, and elastic net regularisation.
result Improved predictive accuracy and model simplicity compared to conventional methods.
A new method computes gradients without backpropagation.
problem Optimization of machine learning models.
method Forward mode automatic differentiation to compute gradients.
result Forward gradient is an unbiased estimate of the gradient, eliminating the need for backpropagation.
In this paper, we consider a class of finite-sum convex optimization problems whose objective function is given by the summation of () smooth components together with some other relatively simple terms. We first introduce a deterministic primal-dual gradient (PDG) method that can achieve the optimal black-bo…
Study tests if input gradients highlight discriminative features, finds they often fail.
problem Validity of assumption that input gradients highlight discriminative features in model predictions.
method Developed DiffROAR framework and BlockMNIST dataset to test assumption on four benchmarks.
result Input gradients of standard models often fail to highlight discriminative features, while robust models do.
Improved Exploration through Latent Trajectory Optimization in Deep Deterministic Policy Gradientcs.LG
Model-free reinforcement learning algorithms such as Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) often require additional exploration strategies, especially if the actor is of deterministic nature. This work evaluates the use of model-based trajectory optimization methods used for exploration in Deep Deterministic Policy…