Online Convex Optimization with Heavy Tails: Old Algorithms, New Regrets, and Applications

In Online Convex Optimization (OCO), when the stochastic gradient has a finite variance, many algorithms provably work and guarantee a sublinear regret. However, limited results are known if the gradient estimate has a heavy tail, i.e., the stochastic gradient only admits a finite \(\mathsf{p}\)-th central moment for some \(\mathsf{p}\in\left(1,2\right]\). Motivated by it, this work examines … Read more

Second order directional derivative of optimal solution function in parametric programming problem

In this paper, the second-order directional derivative of the optimal value function and the optimal solution function are obtained for a strongly stable parametric problem with non-unique Lagrange multipliers. Some properties of the Lagrange multipliers are proved. It is justified that the second-order directional derivative of the optimal solution function for the parametric problem can … Read more

A strongly convergent projection and contraction algorithm with extrapolations from the past

This paper introduces a projection and contraction-type algorithm that features an extrapolation from the past, reducing the two values of the cost operator inherent in the original projection and contraction algorithm to a single value at the current iteration. Strong convergence results of the proposed algorithm are proved in Hilbert spaces. Experimental results on testing … Read more

Swapping objectives accelerates Davis-Yin splitting

In this work, we investigate the application of Davis–Yin splitting (DYS) to convex optimization problems and demonstrate that swapping the roles of the two nonsmooth convex functions can result in a faster convergence rate. Such a swap typically yields a different sequence of iterates, but its impact on convergence behavior has been largely understudied or … Read more

Preconditioning for rational approximation

In this paper, we show that minimax rational approximations can be enhanced by introducing a controlling parameter on the denominator of the rational function. This is implemented by adding a small set of linear constraints to the underlying optimization problem. The modification integrates naturally into approximation models formulated as linear programming problems. We demonstrate our … Read more

A Variational Analysis Approach for Bilevel Hyperparameter Optimization with Sparse Regularization

We study a bilevel optimization framework for hyperparameter learning in variational models, with a focus on sparse regression and classification tasks. In particular, we consider a weighted elastic-net regularizer, where feature-wise regularization parameters are learned through a bilevel formulation. A key novelty of our approach is the use of a Forward-Backward (FB) reformulation of the … Read more

Lipschitz Stability for a Class of Parametric Optimization Problems with Polyhedral Feasible Set Mapping

This paper is devoted to the Lipschitz analysis of the solution sets and optimal values for a class of parametric optimization problems involving a polyhedral feasible set mapping and a quadratic objective function with arametric linear part. Recall that a multifunction is said to be polyhedral if its graph is the union of finitely many polyhedral … Read more

Efficient QUIC-Based Damped Inexact Iterative Reweighting for Sparse Inverse Covariance Estimation with Nonconvex Partly Smooth Regularization

In this paper, we study sparse inverse covariance matrix estimation incorporating partly smooth nonconvex regularizers. To solve the resulting regularized log-determinant problem, we develop DIIR-QUIC—a novel Damped Inexact Iteratively Reweighted algorithm based on QUadratic approximate Inverse Covariance (QUIC) method. Our approach generalizes the classic iteratively reweighted \(\ell_1\) scheme through damped fixed-point updates. A key novelty … Read more

Lipschitz-Free Mirror Descent Methods for Non-Smooth Optimization Problems

The part of the analysis of the convergence rate of the mirror descent method that is connected with the adaptive time-varying step size rules due to Alkousa et al. (MOTOR 2024, pp. 3-18) is corrected. Moreover, a Lipschitz-free mirror descent method that achieves weak ergodic convergence is presented, generalizing the convergence results of the mirror … Read more

Inverse Optimization via Learning Feasible Regions

We study inverse optimization (IO), where the goal is to use a parametric optimization program as the hypothesis class to infer relationships between input-decision pairs. Most of the literature focuses on learning only the objective function, as learning the constraint function (i.e., feasible regions) leads to nonconvex training programs. Motivated by this, we focus on … Read more