arXiv research

We present a primal-dual algorithmic framework to obtain approximate solutions to a prototypical constrained convex optimization problem, and rigorously characterize how common structural assumptions affect the numerical efficiency. Our main analysis technique provides a fresh perspective on Nesterov's excessive gap te…

Paper explores generalization of minimax learners, proposing a new metric.

New methods solve saddle point problems without line search.

We develop a novel unified randomized block-coordinate primal-dual algorithm to solve a class of nonsmooth constrained convex optimization problems, which covers different existing variants and model settings from the literature. We prove that our algorithm achieves optimal $\mathcal{O}(n/k)$ and $\mathcal{O}(n^2/k^2)$…

We propose a doubly stochastic primal-dual coordinate optimization algorithm for empirical risk minimization, which can be formulated as a bilinear saddle-point problem. In each iteration, our method randomly samples a block of coordinates of the primal and dual solutions to update. The linear convergence of our method…

In this paper, we propose a new primal-dual algorithm for minimizing $f(x) + g(x) + h(Ax)$, where $f$, $g$, and $h$ are proper lower semi-continuous convex functions, $f$ is differentiable with a Lipschitz continuous gradient, and $A$ is a bounded linear operator. The proposed algorithm has some famous primal-dual algo…

We propose a new randomized coordinate descent method for a convex optimization template with broad applications. Our analysis relies on a novel combination of four ideas applied to the primal-dual gap function: smoothing, acceleration, homotopy, and coordinate descent with non-uniform sampling. As a result, our method…

We consider a financial market with one riskless and one risky asset. The super-replication theorem states that there is no duality gap in the problem of super-replicating a contingent claim under transaction costs and the associated dual problem. We give two versions of this theorem. The first theorem relates a numéra…

Learning optimal resource allocation policies in wireless systems can be effectively achieved by formulating finite dimensional constrained programs which depend on system configuration, as well as the adopted learning parameterization. The interest here is in cases where system models are unavailable, prompting method…

Random extrapolation speeds up coordinate descent for sparse and dense data.

Paper tackles fast convergence for non-convex strongly-concave min-max problems.

New algorithm solves complex minimax problems efficiently.

Develops a regression approach for solving MDPs with general state and action spaces.

Optimal privacy-preserving algorithm for solving saddle point problems.

We propose a randomized block-coordinate variant of the classic Frank-Wolfe algorithm for convex optimization with block-separable constraints. Despite its lower iteration cost, we show that it achieves a similar convergence rate in duality gap as the full Frank-Wolfe algorithm. We also show that, when applied to the d…

New approach shapes error distribution in long-term forecasting.

Unified view connects CoCoA and ADMM for distributed ERM.

Paper analyzes complexity of PSGLA for sampling log-concave distributions.

Iterative Hard Thresholding (IHT) is a class of projected gradient descent methods for optimizing sparsity-constrained minimization models, with the best known efficiency and scalability in practice. As far as we know, the existing IHT-style methods are designed for sparse minimization in primal form. It remains open t…

The paper tackles online resource allocation with uncertain coefficients and chance constraints.

We study the problem of minimizing the average of a very large number of smooth functions, which is of key importance in training supervised learning models. One of the most celebrated methods in this context is the SAGA algorithm. Despite years of research on the topic, a general-purpose version of SAGA---one that wou…

Improved Frank-Wolfe algorithm for generalized self-concordant functions converges quickly.

New SGDA method speeds up nonconvex minimax optimization.

Paper tightens optimization bounds using conformal prediction.

Dual martingales improve primal optimal stopping problem efficiency.

Autonomous agents must often deal with conflicting requirements, such as completing tasks using the least amount of time/energy, learning multiple tasks, or dealing with multiple opponents. In the context of reinforcement learning~(RL), these problems are addressed by (i)~designing a reward function that simultaneously…

Algebraic methods prove knot primality using Floer homology.

Derives a primal-dual MLSVD formulation for multilinear data.

Coordinate descent methods employ random partial updates of decision variables in order to solve huge-scale convex optimization problems. In this work, we introduce new adaptive rules for the random selection of their updates. By adaptive, we mean that our selection rules are based on the dual residual or the primal-du…

Drago optimizes DRO problems with faster convergence.

New algorithm solves saddle point problems in Banach spaces.

PDCA algorithm learns policies for RL with constraints using a primal-dual approach.

This work presents an explicit-implicit procedure to compute a model predictive control (MPC) law with guarantees on recursive feasibility and asymptotic stability. The approach combines an offline-trained fully-connected neural network with an online primal active set solver. The neural network provides a control inpu…

In this paper, we study a constrained utility maximization problem following the convex duality approach. After formulating the primal and dual problems, we construct the necessary and sufficient conditions for both the primal and dual problems in terms of FBSDEs plus additional conditions. Such formulation then allows…

We consider empirical risk minimization of linear predictors with convex loss functions. Such problems can be reformulated as convex-concave saddle point problems, and thus are well suitable for primal-dual first-order algorithms. However, primal-dual algorithms often require explicit strongly convex regularization in …

Verification of neural networks enables us to gauge their robustness against adversarial attacks. Verification algorithms fall into two categories: exact verifiers that run in exponential time and relaxed verifiers that are efficient but incomplete. In this paper, we unify all existing LP-relaxed verifiers, to the best…

We develop a primal dual active set with continuation algorithm for solving the \ell^0-regularized least-squares problem that frequently arises in compressed sensing. The algorithm couples the the primal dual active set method with a continuation strategy on the regularization parameter. At each inner iteration, it fir…

We study primal-dual type stochastic optimization algorithms with non-uniform sampling. Our main theoretical contribution in this paper is to present a convergence analysis of Stochastic Primal Dual Coordinate (SPDC) Method with arbitrary sampling. Based on this theoretical framework, we propose Optimality Violation-ba…

Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP) is a natural framework for reinforcement learning tasks with safety constraints, where agents learn a policy that maximizes the long-term reward while satisfying the constraints on the long-term cost. A canonical approach for solving CMDPs is the primal-dual method which updat…

We study a stochastic and distributed algorithm for nonconvex problems whose objective consists of a sum of $N$ nonconvex $L_i/N$-smooth functions, plus a nonsmooth regularizer. The proposed NonconvEx primal-dual SpliTTing (NESTT) algorithm splits the problem into $N$ subproblems, and utilizes an augmented Lagrangian b…

Paper proposes a novel metric learning algorithm using Riemannian optimization.

New algorithm for federated learning with non-smooth regularizers.

We provide theoretical complexity analysis for new algorithms to compute the optimal transport (OT) distance between two discrete probability distributions, and demonstrate their favorable practical performance over state-of-art primal-dual algorithms and their capability in solving other problems in large-scale, such …

Study stability of contingent claim solutions under probabilistic perturbations.

New algorithm speeds up large-scale statistical inference.

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

We introduce Primal-Dual Wasserstein GAN, a new learning algorithm for building latent variable models of the data distribution based on the primal and the dual formulations of the optimal transport (OT) problem. We utilize the primal formulation to learn a flexible inference mechanism and to create an optimal approxim…

Efficient algorithm solves best subset selection problem.