We consider the setting of online convex optimization (OCO) with \textit{exp-concave} losses. The best regret bound known for this setting is $O(n\log{}T)$, where $n$ is the dimension and $T$ is the number of prediction rounds (treating all other quantities as constants and assuming $T$ is sufficiently large), and is attainable via the well-known Online Newton Step algorithm (ONS). However, ONS requires on each iteration to compute a projection (according to some matrix-induced norm) onto the feasible convex set, which is often computationally prohibitive in high-dimensional settings and when the feasible set admits a non-trivial structure. In this work we consider projection-free online algorithms for exp-concave and smooth losses, where by projection-free we refer to algorithms that rely only on the availability of a linear optimization oracle (LOO) for the feasible set, which in many applications of interest admits much more efficient implementations than a projection oracle. We present an LOO-based ONS-style algorithm, which using overall $O(T)$ calls to a LOO, guarantees in worst case regret bounded by $\widetilde{O}(n^{2/3}T^{2/3})$ (ignoring all quantities except for $n,T$). However, our algorithm is most interesting in an important and plausible low-dimensional data scenario: if the gradients (approximately) span a subspace of dimension at most $ρ$, $ρ<< n$, the regret bound improves to $\widetilde{O}(ρ^{2/3}T^{2/3})$, and by applying standard deterministic sketching techniques, both the space and average additional per-iteration runtime requirements are only $O(ρn)$ (instead of $O(n^2)$). This improves upon recently proposed LOO-based algorithms for OCO which, while having the same state-of-the-art dependence on the horizon $T$, suffer from regret/oracle complexity that scales with $\sqrt{n}$ or worse.
Universal Online Convex Optimization with $1$ Projection per Round
National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University（南京大学计算机软件新技术国家重点实验室）；School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University（南京大学人工智能学院）
Derivative-free Alternating Projection Algorithms for General Nonconvex-Concave Minimax Problems
Shanghai University（上海大学）；Newtouch Center for Mathematics of Shanghai University（上海大学新触数学中心）；Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院数学与系统科学研究院）
Zeroth-Order primal-dual Alternating Projection Gradient Algorithms for Nonconvex Minimax Problems with Coupled linear Constraints
Department of Mathematics, College of Sciences, Shanghai University（上海大学数学系）；Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院数学与系统科学研究院）；Newtouch Center for Mathematics of Shanghai University（上海大学数学中心）；State Key Laboratory of Mathematical Sciences, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院数学与系统科学研究院数学科学国家重点实验室）；School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学数学科学学院）
