Multilevel Optimization Methods: Convergence and Problem Structure

Building upon multigrid methods, the framework of multilevel optimization methods was developed to solve structured optimization problems, including problems in optimal control, image processing, etc. In this paper, we give a broader view of the multilevel framework and establish some connections between multilevel algorithms and the other approaches. An interesting case of the so called … Read more

Empirical Risk Minimization: Probabilistic Complexity and Stepsize Strategy

Empirical risk minimization (ERM) is recognized as a special form in standard convex optimization. When using a first order method, the Lipschitz constant of the empirical risk plays a crucial role in the convergence analysis and stepsize strategies for these problems. We derive the probabilistic bounds for such Lipschitz constants using random matrix theory. We … Read more

Generalized Symmetric ADMM for Separable Convex Optimization

The Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) has been proved to be effective for solving separable convex optimization subject to linear constraints. In this paper, we propose a Generalized Symmetric ADMM (GS-ADMM), which updates the Lagrange multiplier twice with suitable stepsizes, to solve the multi-block separable convex programming. This GS-ADMM partitions the data into two … Read more

A Primal-Dual Homotopy Algorithm for l_1-Minimization with l_inf-Constraints

In this paper we propose a primal-dual homotopy method for $\ell_1$-minimization problems with infinity norm constraints in the context of sparse reconstruction. The natural homotopy parameter is the value of the bound for the constraints and we show that there exists a piecewise linear solution path with finitely many break points for the primal problem … Read more

An Inexact Spingarn’s Partial Inverse Method with Applications to Operator Splitting and Composite Optimization

We propose and study the iteration-complexity of an inexact version of the Spingarn’s partial inverse method. Its complexity analysis is performed by viewing it in the framework of the hybrid proximal extragradient (HPE) method, for which pointwise and ergodic iteration-complexity has been established recently by Monteiro and Svaiter. As applications, we propose and analyze the … Read more

A proximal-Newton method for unconstrained convex optimization in Hilbert spaces

We propose and study the iteration-complexity of a proximal-Newton method for finding approximate solutions of the problem of minimizing a twice continuously differentiable convex function on a (possibly infinite dimensional) Hilbert space. We prove global convergence rates for obtaining approximate solutions in terms of function/gradient values. Our main results follow from an iteration-complexity study of … Read more

On the local convergence analysis of the Gradient Sampling method

The Gradient Sampling method is a recently developed tool for solving unconstrained nonsmooth optimization problems. Using just first order information about the objective function, it generalizes the steepest descent method, one of the most classical methods to minimize a smooth function. This manuscript aims at determining under which circumstances one can expect the same local … Read more

A general double-proximal gradient algorithm for d.c. programming

The possibilities of exploiting the special structure of d.c. programs, which consist of optimizing the difference of convex functions, are currently more or less limited to variants of the DCA proposed by Pham Dinh Tao and Le Thi Hoai An in 1997. These assume that either the convex or the concave part, or both, are … Read more

Relatively-Smooth Convex Optimization by First-Order Methods, and Applications

The usual approach to developing and analyzing first-order methods for smooth convex optimization assumes that the gradient of the objective function is uniformly smooth with some Lipschitz constant L. However, in many settings the differentiable convex function f(.) is not uniformly smooth — for example in D-optimal design where f(x):=-ln det(HXH^T), or even the univariate … Read more