A bilevel hierarchical clustering model is commonly used in designing optimal multicast networks. In this paper, we consider two different formulations of the bilevel hierarchical clustering problem, a discrete optimization problem which can be shown to be NP-hard. Our approach is to reformulate the problem as a continuous optimization problem by making some relaxations on the discreteness conditions. Then Nesterov's smoothing technique and a numerical algorithm for minimizing differences of convex functions called the DCA are applied to cope with the nonsmoothness and nonconvexity of the problem. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate our method.
The Sylvester smallest enclosing circle problem involves finding the smallest circle that encloses a finite number of points in the plane. We consider generalized versions of the Sylvester problem in which the points are replaced by sets. Based on the log-exponential smoothing technique and Nesterov's accelerated gradient method, we present an effective numerical algorithm for solving these problems.
This paper considers a class of constrained convex stochastic composite optimization problems whose objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable convex component, together with a nonsmooth but convex component. The nonsmooth component has an explicit max structure that may not easy to compute its proximal mapping. In order to solve these problems, we propose a mini-batch stochastic Nesterov's smoothing (MSNS) method. Convergence and the optimal iteration complexity of the method are established. Numerical results are provided to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed MSN…
This paper continues our effort initiated in [9] to study Multicast Communication Networks, modeled as bilevel hierarchical clustering problems, by using mathematical optimization techniques. Given a finite number of nodes, we consider two different models of multicast networks by identifying a certain number of nodes as cluster centers, and at the same time, locating a particular node that serves as a total center so as to minimize the total transportation cost through the network. The fact that the cluster centers and the total center have to be among the given nodes makes this problem a dis…
We propose an adaptive smoothing algorithm based on Nesterov's smoothing technique in \cite{Nesterov2005c} for solving "fully" nonsmooth composite convex optimization problems. Our method combines both Nesterov's accelerated proximal gradient scheme and a new homotopy strategy for smoothness parameter. By an appropriate choice of smoothing functions, we develop a new algorithm that has the $\mathcal{O}\left(\frac{1}{\varepsilon}\right)$-worst-case iteration-complexity while preserves the same complexity-per-iteration as in Nesterov's method and allows one to automatically update the smoothness…
The motivation to study the behavior of limited-memory BFGS (L-BFGS) on nonsmooth optimization problems is based on two empirical observations: the widespread success of L-BFGS in solving large-scale smooth optimization problems, and the effectiveness of the full BFGS method in solving small to medium-sized nonsmooth optimization problems, based on using a gradient, not a subgradient, oracle paradigm. We first summarize our theoretical results on the behavior of the scaled L-BFGS method with one update applied to a simple convex nonsmooth function that is unbounded below, stating conditions un…
This paper extends the algorithm schemes proposed in \cite{Nesterov2007a} and \cite{Nesterov2007b} to the minimization of the sum of a composite objective function and a convex function. Two proximal point-type schemes are provided and their global convergence is investigated. The worst case complexity bound is also estimated under certain Lipschitz conditions and nondegeneratedness. The algorithm is then accelerated to get a faster convergence rate for the strongly convex case.
This paper considers a class of convex constrained nonsmooth convex stochastic composite optimization problems whose objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable convex component, together with a general nonsmooth but convex component. The nonsmooth component is not required to have easily obtainable proximal operator, or have the max structure that the smoothing technique in [Nesterov, 2005] can be used. In order to solve such type problems, we propose an adaptive smoothing mini-batch stochastic accelerated gradient (AdaSMSAG) method, which combines the stochastic approxim…
In this paper, we develop a novel {\bf ho}moto{\bf p}y {\bf s}moothing (HOPS) algorithm for solving a family of non-smooth problems that is composed of a non-smooth term with an explicit max-structure and a smooth term or a simple non-smooth term whose proximal mapping is easy to compute. The best known iteration complexity for solving such non-smooth optimization problems is $O(1/ε)$ without any assumption on the strong convexity. In this work, we will show that the proposed HOPS achieved a lower iteration complexity of $\widetilde O(1/ε^{1-θ})$\footnote{$\widetilde O()$ suppresses a logarith…
In this paper we develop algorithms to solve generalized weighted Fermat-Torricelli problems with positive and negative weights and multifacility location problems involving distances generated by Minkowski gauges. We also introduce a new model of clustering based on squared distances to convex sets. Using the Nesterov smoothing technique and an algorithm for minimizing differences of convex functions called the DCA introduced by Tao and An, we develop effective algorithms for solving these problems.
In this paper we present a complete iteration complexity analysis of inexact first order Lagrangian and penalty methods for solving cone constrained convex problems that have or may not have optimal Lagrange multipliers that close the duality gap. We first assume the existence of optimal Lagrange multipliers and study primal-dual first order methods based on inexact information and augmented Lagrangian smoothing or Nesterov type smoothing. For inexact (fast) gradient augmented Lagrangian methods we derive a total computational complexity of $\mathcal{O}\left(\frac{1}ε\right)$ projections onto …
Dual decomposition is a powerful technique for deriving decomposition schemes for convex optimization problems with separable structure. Although the Augmented Lagrangian is computationally more stable than the ordinary Lagrangian, the prox-term destroys the separability of the given problem. In this paper we use another approach to obtain a smooth Lagrangian, based on a smoothing technique developed by Nesterov, which preserves separability of the problem. With this approach we derive a new decomposition method, called proximal center algorithm, which from the viewpoint of efficiency estimate…
In this note, we establish superiority of the so-called copositive bound over a bound suggested by Nesterov for the quadratic problem to minimize a quadratic form over the l1-ball. We illustrate the improvement by simulation results. The copositive bound has the additional advantage that it can be easily extended to the inhomogeneous case of quadratic objectives including a linear term. We also indicate some improvements of the eigenvalue bound for the quadratic optimization over the lp-ball with 1<p<2, at least for p close to one.
In this paper, the problem of computing the projection, and therefore the minimum distance, from a point onto a Minkowski sum of general convex sets is studied. Our approach is based on the minimum norm duality theorem originally stated by Nirenberg and the Nesterov smoothing techniques. It is shown that projection points onto a Minkowski sum of sets can be represented as the sum of points on constituent sets so that, at these points, all of the sets share the same normal vector which is the negative of the dual solution. The proposed NESMINO algorithm improves the theoretical bound on number …
In this paper we deal with a general second order continuous dynamical system associated to a convex minimization problem with a Frèchet differentiable objective function. We show that inertial algorithms, such as Nesterov's algorithm, can be obtained via the natural explicit discretization from our dynamical system. Our dynamical system can be viewed as a perturbed version of the heavy ball method with vanishing damping, however the perturbation is made in the argument of the gradient of the objective function. This perturbation seems to have a smoothing effect for the energy error and elimin…
The problem of minimizing a separable convex function under linearly coupled constraints arises from various application domains such as economic systems, distributed control, and network flow. The main challenge for solving this problem is that the size of data is very large, which makes usual gradient-based methods infeasible. Recently, Necoara, Nesterov, and Glineur [Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, 173 (2017) 227-2254] proposed an efficient randomized coordinate descent method to solve this type of optimization problems and presented an appealing convergence analysis. In th…
We introduce a new weighted averaging scheme using "Fenchel-type" operators to recover primal solutions in the alternating minimization-type algorithm (AMA) for prototype constrained convex optimization. Our approach combines the classical AMA idea in \cite{Tseng1991} and Nesterov's prox-function smoothing technique without requiring the strong convexity of the objective function. We develop a new non-accelerated primal-dual AMA method and estimate its primal convergence rate both on the objective residual and on the feasibility gap. Then, we incorporate Nesterov's accelerated step into this a…
Although Nesterov's accelerated gradient (NAG) methods have been studied from various perspectives, it remains unclear why the most popular forms of NAG must handle convex and strongly convex objective functions separately. Motivated by this inconsistency, we propose an NAG method that unifies the existing ones for the convex and strongly convex cases. We first design a Lagrangian function that continuously extends the first Bregman Lagrangian to the strongly convex setting. As a specific case of the Euler--Lagrange equation for this Lagrangian, we derive an ordinary differential equation (ODE…
We present two classes of differentially private optimization algorithms derived from the well-known accelerated first-order methods. The first algorithm is inspired by Polyak's heavy ball method and employs a smoothing approach to decrease the accumulated noise on the gradient steps required for differential privacy. The second class of algorithms are based on Nesterov's accelerated gradient method and its recent multi-stage variant. We propose a noise dividing mechanism for the iterations of Nesterov's method in order to improve the error behavior of the algorithm. The convergence rate analy…
This paper is concerned with finding an optimal algorithm for minimizing a composite convex objective function. The basic setting is that the objective is the sum of two convex functions: the first function is smooth with up to the d-th order derivative information available, and the second function is possibly non-smooth, but its proximal tensor mappings can be computed approximately in an efficient manner. The problem is to find -- in that setting -- the best possible (optimal) iteration complexity for convex optimization. Along that line, for the smooth case (without the second non-smooth p…
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 technique in a structured fashion and unifies it with smoothing and primal-dual methods. For instance, through the choices of a dual smoothing strategy and a center point, our framework subsumes decomposition algorithms, augmented Lagrangian as well as the alternating direction met…
A new decomposition optimization algorithm, called \textit{path-following gradient-based decomposition}, is proposed to solve separable convex optimization problems. Unlike path-following Newton methods considered in the literature, this algorithm does not requires any smoothness assumption on the objective function. This allows us to handle more general classes of problems arising in many real applications than in the path-following Newton methods. The new algorithm is a combination of three techniques, namely smoothing, Lagrangian decomposition and path-following gradient framework. The algo…
We develop a distributed algorithm for convex Empirical Risk Minimization, the problem of minimizing large but finite sum of convex functions over networks. The proposed algorithm is derived from directly discretizing the second-order heavy-ball differential equation and results in an accelerated convergence rate, i.e, faster than distributed gradient descent-based methods for strongly convex objectives that may not be smooth. Notably, we achieve acceleration without resorting to the well-known Nesterov's momentum approach. We provide numerical experiments and contrast the proposed method with…
In compressed sensing, the sensing matrix is assumed perfectly known. However, there exists perturbation in the sensing matrix in reality due to sensor offsets or noise disturbance. Directions-of-arrival (DoA) estimation with off-grid effect satisfies this situation, and can be formulated into a (non)convex optimization problem with linear inequalities constraints, which can be solved by the interior point method (using the CVX tools), but at a large computational cost. In this work, in order to design efficient algorithms, we consider various alternative formulations, such as unconstrained fo…
We propose new proximal bundle algorithms for minimizing a nonsmooth convex function. These algorithms are derived from the application of Nesterov fast gradient methods for smooth convex minimization to the so-called Moreau-Yosida regularization $F_μ$ of $f$ w.r.t. some $μ>0$. Since the exact values and gradients of $F_μ$ are difficult to evaluate, we use approximate proximal points thanks to a bundle strategy to get implementable algorithms. One of these algorithms appears as an implementable version of a special case of inertial proximal algorithm. We give their complexity estimates in term…
We consider global efficiency of algorithms for minimizing a sum of a convex function and a composition of a Lipschitz convex function with a smooth map. The basic algorithm we rely on is the prox-linear method, which in each iteration solves a regularized subproblem formed by linearizing the smooth map. When the subproblems are solved exactly, the method has efficiency $\mathcal{O}(\varepsilon^{-2})$, akin to gradient descent for smooth minimization. We show that when the subproblems can only be solved by first-order methods, a simple combination of smoothing, the prox-linear method, and a fa…
Simon Fraser University（西蒙弗雷泽大学）；Microsoft Research（微软研究院）
In this paper we analyze the randomized block-coordinate descent (RBCD) methods proposed in [8,11] for minimizing the sum of a smooth convex function and a block-separable convex function. In particular, we extend Nesterov's technique developed in [8] for analyzing the RBCD method for minimizing a smooth convex function over a block-separable closed convex set to the aforementioned more general problem and obtain a sharper expected-value type of convergence rate than the one implied in [11]. Also, we obtain a better high-probability type of iteration complexity, which improves upon the one in …
We propose a new self-adaptive, double-loop smoothing algorithm to solve composite, nonsmooth, and constrained convex optimization problems. Our algorithm is based on Nesterov's smoothing technique via general Bregman distance functions. It self-adaptively selects the number of iterations in the inner loop to achieve a desired complexity bound without requiring the accuracy a priori as in variants of Augmented Lagrangian methods (ALM). We prove $\BigO{\frac{1}{k}}$-convergence rate on the last iterate of the outer sequence for both unconstrained and constrained settings in contrast to ergodic …
Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago（芝加哥丰田技术研究所）；Katholieke Universiteit Leuven（鲁汶大学）
Motivated by learning problems including max-norm regularized matrix completion and clustering, robust PCA and sparse inverse covariance selection, we propose a novel optimization algorithm for minimizing a convex objective which decomposes into three parts: a smooth part, a simple non-smooth Lipschitz part, and a simple non-smooth non-Lipschitz part. We use a time variant smoothing strategy that allows us to obtain a guarantee that does not depend on knowing in advance the total number of iterations nor a bound on the domain.
We introduce a generic scheme for accelerating first-order optimization methods in the sense of Nesterov, which builds upon a new analysis of the accelerated proximal point algorithm. Our approach consists of minimizing a convex objective by approximately solving a sequence of well-chosen auxiliary problems, leading to faster convergence. This strategy applies to a large class of algorithms, including gradient descent, block coordinate descent, SAG, SAGA, SDCA, SVRG, Finito/MISO, and their proximal variants. For all of these methods, we provide acceleration and explicit support for non-strongl…
In this paper we develop a randomized block-coordinate descent method for minimizing the sum of a smooth and a simple nonsmooth block-separable convex function and prove that it obtains an $ε$-accurate solution with probability at least $1-ρ$ in at most $O(\tfrac{n}ε \log \tfrac{1}ρ)$ iterations, where $n$ is the number of blocks. For strongly convex functions the method converges linearly. This extends recent results of Nesterov [Efficiency of coordinate descent methods on huge-scale optimization problems, CORE Discussion Paper #2010/2], which cover the smooth case, to composite minimization,…
In this paper, we focus on the problem of minimizing the sum of a nonconvex differentiable function and a DC (Difference of Convex functions) function, where the differentiable function is not restricted to the global Lipschitz gradient continuity assumption. This problem covers a broad range of applications in machine learning and statistics such as compressed sensing, signal recovery, sparse dictionary learning, and matrix factorization, etc. We take inspiration from the Nesterov's acceleration technique and the DC algorithm to develop a novel algorithm for the considered problem. Analyzing …
Quasar convexity is a condition that allows some first-order methods to efficiently minimize a function even when the optimization landscape is non-convex. Previous works develop near-optimal accelerated algorithms for minimizing this class of functions, however, they require a subroutine of binary search which results in multiple calls to gradient evaluations in each iteration, and consequently the total number of gradient evaluations does not match a known lower bound. In this work, we show that a recently proposed continuized Nesterov acceleration can be applied to minimizing quasar convex …
University of Florida（佛罗里达大学）；Georgia State University（佐治亚州立大学）
Optimization algorithms for solving nonconvex inverse problem have attracted significant interests recently. However, existing methods require the nonconvex regularization to be smooth or simple to ensure convergence. In this paper, we propose a novel gradient descent type algorithm, by leveraging the idea of residual learning and Nesterov's smoothing technique, to solve inverse problems consisting of general nonconvex and nonsmooth regularization with provable convergence. Moreover, we develop a neural network architecture intimating this algorithm to learn the nonlinear sparsity transformati…
Our main goal in this paper is to show that one can skip gradient computations for gradient descent type methods applied to certain structured convex programming (CP) problems. To this end, we first present an accelerated gradient sliding (AGS) method for minimizing the summation of two smooth convex functions with different Lipschitz constants. We show that the AGS method can skip the gradient computation for one of these smooth components without slowing down the overall optimal rate of convergence. This result is much sharper than the classic black-box CP complexity results especially when …
Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；Rutgers University（罗格斯大学）
We study the problem of minimizing a strongly convex, smooth function when we have noisy estimates of its gradient. We propose a novel multistage accelerated algorithm that is universally optimal in the sense that it achieves the optimal rate both in the deterministic and stochastic case and operates without knowledge of noise characteristics. The algorithm consists of stages that use a stochastic version of Nesterov's method with a specific restart and parameters selected to achieve the fastest reduction in the bias-variance terms in the convergence rate bounds.
We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of two convex functions: one is differentiable and relatively smooth with respect to a reference convex function, and the other can be nondifferentiable but simple to optimize. We investigate a triangle scaling property of the Bregman distance generated by the reference convex function and present accelerated Bregman proximal gradient (ABPG) methods that attain an $O(k^{-γ})$ convergence rate, where $γ\in(0,2]$ is the triangle scaling exponent (TSE) of the Bregman distance. For the Euclidean distance, we have $γ=2$ and recover the convergence rate …
