A Sparsity Preserving Stochastic Gradient Method for Composite Optimization

We propose new stochastic gradient algorithms for solving convex composite optimization problems. In each iteration, our algorithms utilize a stochastic oracle of the gradient of the smooth component in the objective function. Our algorithms are based on a stochastic version of the estimate sequence technique introduced by Nesterov (Introductory Lectures on Convex Optimization: A Basic … Read more

Explicit Solutions for Root Optimization of a Polynomial Family with One Affine Constraint

Given a family of real or complex monic polynomials of fixed degree with one affine constraint on their coefficients, consider the problem of minimizing the root radius (largest modulus of the roots) or root abscissa (largest real part of the roots). We give constructive methods for efficiently computing the globally optimal value as well as … Read more

Group Sparse Optimization by Alternating Direction Method

This paper proposes efficient algorithms for group sparse optimization with mixed L21-regularization, which arises from the reconstruction of group sparse signals in compressive sensing, and the group Lasso problem in statistics and machine learning. It is known that encoding the group information in addition to sparsity will lead to better signal recovery/feature selection. The L21-regularization … Read more

FAST FIRST-ORDER METHODS FOR COMPOSITE CONVEX OPTIMIZATION WITH BACKTRACKING

We propose new versions of accelerated first order methods for convex composite optimization, where the prox parameter is allowed to increase from one iteration to the next. In particular we show that a full backtracking strategy can be used within the FISTA \cite{Beck-Teboulle-2009} and FALM algorithms \cite{Goldfarb-Ma-Scheinberg-2010} while preserving their worst-case iteration complexities of $O(\sqrt{L(f)/\epsilon})$. … Read more

Level methods uniformly optimal for composite and structured nonsmooth convex optimization

The main goal of this paper is to develop uniformly optimal first-order methods for large-scale convex programming (CP). By uniform optimality we mean that the first-order methods themselves do not require the input of any problem parameters, but can still achieve the best possible iteration complexity bounds. To this end, we provide a substantial generalization … Read more

Level methods uniformly optimal for composite and structured nonsmooth convex optimization

The main goal of this paper is to develop uniformly optimal first-order methods for large-scale convex programming (CP). By uniform optimality we mean that the first-order methods themselves do not require the input of any problem parameters, but can still achieve the best possible iteration complexity bounds. To this end, we provide a substantial generalization … Read more

Computation of sparse low degree interpolating polynomials and their application to derivative-free optimization

Interpolation-based trust-region methods are an important class of algorithms for Derivative-Free Optimization which rely on locally approximating an objective function by quadratic polynomial interpolation models, frequently built from less points than there are basis components. Often, in practical applications, the contribution of the problem variables to the objective function is such that many pairwise correlations … Read more

On partially sparse recovery

In this paper we consider the problem of recovering a partially sparse solution of an underdetermined system of linear equations by minimizing the l1-norm of the part of the solution vector which is known to be sparse. Such a problem is closely related to the classical problem in Compressed Sensing where the l1-norm of the … Read more

Computation of sparse low degree interpolating polynomials and their application to derivative-free optimization

Interpolation-based trust-region methods are an important class of algorithms for Derivative-Free Optimization which rely on locally approximating an objective function by quadratic polynomial interpolation models, frequently built from less points than there are basis components. Often, in practical applications, the contribution of the problem variables to the objective function is such that many pairwise correlations … Read more

On partially sparse recovery

In this paper we consider the problem of recovering a partially sparse solution of an underdetermined system of linear equations by minimizing the l1-norm of the part of the solution vector which is known to be sparse. Such a problem is closely related to the classical problem in Compressed Sensing where the l1-norm of the … Read more