We provide new insight into a {\em generalized conditional subgradient} algorithm and a {\em generalized mirror descent} algorithm for the convex minimization problem \[ \min_x \; \{f(Ax) + h(x)\}.\] As Bach showed in [{\em SIAM J. Optim.}, 25 (2015), pp. 115--129], applying either of these two algorithms to this problem is equivalent to applying the other one to its Fenchel dual. We leverage this duality relationship to develop new upper bounds and convergence results for the gap between the primal and dual iterates generated by these two algorithms. We also propose a new {\em primal-dual hyb…
Based on the ideas of arXiv:1710.06612, we consider the problem of minimization of the Holder-continuous non-smooth functional $f$ with non-positive convex (generally, non-smooth) Lipschitz-continuous functional constraint. We propose some novel strategies of step-sizes and adaptive stopping rules in Mirror Descent algorithms for the considered class of problems. It is shown that the methods are applicable to the objective functionals of various levels of smoothness. Applying the restart technique to the Mirror Descent Algorithm there was proposed an optimal method to solve optimization proble…
In this paper we consider convergence rate problems for stochastic strongly-convex optimization in the non-Euclidean sense with a constraint set over a time-varying multi-agent network. We propose two efficient non-Euclidean stochastic subgradient descent algorithms based on the Bregman divergence as distance-measuring function rather than the Euclidean distances that were employed by the standard distributed stochastic projected subgradient algorithms. For distributed optimization of nonsmooth and strongly convex functions whose only stochastic subgradients are available, the first algorithm …
We propose a new family of subgradient- and gradient-based methods which converges with optimal complexity for convex optimization problems whose feasible region is simple enough. This includes cases where the objective function is non-smooth, smooth, have composite/saddle structure, or are given by an inexact oracle model. We unified the way of constructing the subproblems which are necessary to be solved at each iteration of these methods. This permitted us to analyze the convergence of these methods in a unified way compared to previous results which required different approaches for each m…
Given a convex optimization problem and its dual, there are many possible first-order algorithms. In this paper, we show the equivalence between mirror descent algorithms and algorithms generalizing the conditional gradient method. This is done through convex duality, and implies notably that for certain problems, such as for supervised machine learning problems with non-smooth losses or problems regularized by non-smooth regularizers, the primal subgradient method and the dual conditional gradient method are formally equivalent. The dual interpretation leads to a form of line search for mirro…
In this paper, we consider a distributed constrained optimization problem with delayed subgradient information over the time-varying communication network, where each agent can only communicate with its neighbors and the communication channel has a limited data rate. We propose an adaptive quantization method to address this problem. A mirror descent algorithm with delayed subgradient information is established based on the theory of Bregman divergence. With non-Euclidean Bregman projection-based scheme, the proposed method essentially generalizes many previous classical Euclidean projection-b…
This chapter is devoted to the black-box subgradient algorithms with the minimal requirements for the storage of auxiliary results, which are necessary to execute these algorithms. It starts with the original result of N.Z. Shor which open this field with the application to the classical transportation problem. To discuss the fundamentals of non-smooth optimization the theoretical complexity bounds for smooth and non-smooth convex and quasi-convex optimization problems are briefly exposed with the special attention given to adaptive step-size policy. Than this chapter contains descriptions of …
We consider randomized block coordinate stochastic mirror descent (RBSMD) methods for solving high-dimensional stochastic optimization problems with strongly convex objective functions. Our goal is to develop RBSMD schemes that achieve a rate of convergence with a minimum constant factor with respect to the choice of the stepsize sequence. To this end, we consider both subgradient and gradient RBSMD methods addressing nonsmooth and smooth problems, respectively. For each scheme, (i) we develop self-tuned stepsize rules characterized in terms of problem parameters and algorithm settings; (ii) w…
We consider centralized and distributed mirror descent algorithms over a finite-dimensional Hilbert space, and prove that the problem variables converge to an optimizer of a possibly nonsmooth function when the step sizes are square summable but not summable. Prior literature has focused on the convergence of the function value to its optimum. However, applications from distributed optimization and learning in games require the convergence of the variables to an optimizer, which is generally not guaranteed without assuming strong convexity of the objective function. We provide numerical simula…
Theoretical estimates of the convergence rate of many well-known gradient-type optimization methods are based on quadratic interpolation, provided that the Lipschitz condition for the gradient is satisfied. In this article we obtain a possibility of constructing an analogue of such interpolation in the class of locally Lipschitz quasi-convex functionals with the special conditions of non-smoothness (Lipshitz-continuous subgradient) introduced in this paper. As an application, estimates are obtained for the rate of convergence of the previously proposed adaptive mirror descent method for the pr…
In this paper, we investigate the non-asymptotic stationary convergence behavior of Stochastic Mirror Descent (SMD) for nonconvex optimization. We focus on a general class of nonconvex nonsmooth stochastic optimization problems, in which the objective can be decomposed into a relatively weakly convex function (possibly non-Lipschitz) and a simple non-smooth convex regularizer. We prove that SMD, without the use of mini-batch, is guaranteed to converge to a stationary point in a convergence rate of $ \mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{t}) $. The efficiency estimate matches with existing results for stochastic…
We consider the problem of minimization of a convex function on a simple set with convex non-smooth inequality constraint and describe first-order methods to solve such problems in different situations: smooth or non-smooth objective function; convex or strongly convex objective and constraint; deterministic or randomized information about the objective and constraint. We hope that it is convenient for a reader to have all the methods for different settings in one place. Described methods are based on Mirror Descent algorithm and switching subgradient scheme. One of our focus is to propose, fo…
This paper is concerned with multi-agent optimization problem. A distributed randomized gradient-free mirror descent (DRGFMD) method is developed by introducing a randomized gradient-free oracle in the mirror descent scheme where the non-Euclidean Bregman divergence is used. The classical gradient descent method is generalized without using subgradient information of objective functions. The proposed algorithm is the first distributed non-Euclidean zeroth-order method which achieves an $O(1/\sqrt{T})$ convergence rate, recovering the best known optimal rate of distributed compact constrained c…
We generalize stochastic subgradient descent methods to situations in which we do not receive independent samples from the distribution over which we optimize, but instead receive samples that are coupled over time. We show that as long as the source of randomness is suitably ergodic---it converges quickly enough to a stationary distribution---the method enjoys strong convergence guarantees, both in expectation and with high probability. This result has implications for stochastic optimization in high-dimensional spaces, peer-to-peer distributed optimization schemes, decision problems with dep…
"Classical" First Order (FO) algorithms of convex optimization, such as Mirror Descent algorithm or Nesterov's optimal algorithm of smooth convex optimization, are well known to have optimal (theoretical) complexity estimates which do not depend on the problem dimension. However, to attain the optimality, the domain of the problem should admit a "good proximal setup". The latter essentially means that 1) the problem domain should satisfy certain geometric conditions of "favorable geometry", and 2) the practical use of these methods is conditioned by our ability to compute at a moderate cost {\…
INRIA, École Normale Supérieure(法国国家信息与自动化研究所,巴黎高等师范学院);MILA, Université de Montréal(米拉人工智能研究中心,蒙特利尔大学);CMCC, Federal University of ABC(气候变化、海洋和陆地交叉研究中心,ABC联邦大学)
We introduce an inexact variant of Stochastic Mirror Descent (SMD), called Inexact Stochastic Mirror Descent (ISMD), to solve nonlinear two-stage stochastic programs where the second stage problem has linear and nonlinear coupling constraints and a nonlinear objective function which depends on both first and second stage decisions. Given a candidate first stage solution and a realization of the second stage random vector, each iteration of ISMD combines a stochastic subgradient descent using a prox-mapping with the computation of approximate (instead of exact for SMD) primal and dual second st…
In this paper, we propose Distributed Mirror Descent (DMD) algorithm for constrained convex optimization problems on a (strongly-)connected multi-agent network. We assume that each agent has a private objective function and a constraint set. The proposed DMD algorithm employs a locally designed Bregman distance function at each agent, and thus can be viewed as a generalization of the well-known Distributed Projected Subgradient (DPS) methods, which use identical Euclidean distances at the agents. At each iteration of the DMD, each agent optimizes its own objective adjusted with the Bregman dis…
Constrained and Composite Sampling via Proximal Sampler
Department of Computer Science, University of Rochester(计算机科学系,罗切斯特大学);Goergen Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (GIDS-AI)(数据科学与人工智能研究所(GIDS-AI))