An example of slow convergence for Newton’s method on a function with globally Lipschitz continuous Hessian

An example is presented where Newton’s method for unconstrained minimization is applied to find an $\epsilon$-approximate first-order critical point of a smooth function and takes a multiple of $\epsilon^{-2}$ iterations and function evaluations to terminate, which is as many as the steepest-descent method in its worst-case. The novel feature of the proposed example is that … Read more

On the evaluation complexity of constrained nonlinear least-squares and general constrained nonlinear optimization using second-order methods

When solving the general smooth nonlinear optimization problem involving equality and/or inequality constraints, an approximate first-order critical point of accuracy $\epsilon$ can be obtained by a second-order method using cubic regularization in at most $O(\epsilon^{-3/2})$ problem-functions evaluations, the same order bound as in the unconstrained case. This result is obtained by first showing that the … Read more

Worst-case evaluation complexity of non-monotone gradient-related algorithms for unconstrained optimization

The worst-case evaluation complexity of finding an approximate first-order critical point using gradient-related non-monotone methods for smooth nonconvex and unconstrained problems is investigated. The analysis covers a practical linesearch implementation of these popular methods, allowing for an unknown number of evaluations of the objective function (and its gradient) per iteration. It is shown that this … Read more

Strong local convergence properties of adaptive regularized methods for nonlinear least-squares

This paper studies adaptive regularized methods for nonlinear least-squares problems where the model of the objective function used at each iteration is either the Euclidean residual regularized by a quadratic term or the Gauss-Newton model regularized by a cubic term. For suitable choices of the regularization parameter the role of the regularization term is to … Read more

Low-rank matrix completion via preconditioned optimization on the Grassmann manifold

We address the numerical problem of recovering large matrices of low rank when most of the entries are unknown. We exploit the geometry of the low-rank constraint to recast the problem as an unconstrained optimization problem on a single Grassmann manifold. We then apply second-order Riemannian trust-region methods (RTRMC 2) and Riemannian conjugate gradient methods … Read more

On the complexity of the steepest-descent with exact linesearches

The worst-case complexity of the steepest-descent algorithm with exact linesearches for unconstrained smooth optimization is analyzed, and it is shown that the number of iterations of this algorithm which may be necessary to find an iterate at which the norm of the objective function’s gradient is less that a prescribed $\epsilon$ is, essentially, a multiple … Read more

Conjugate-gradients versus multigrid solvers for diffusion-based correlation models in data assimilation

This paper provides a theoretical and experimental comparison between conjugate-gradients and multigrid, two iterative schemes for solving linear systems, in the context of applying diffusion-based correlation models in data assimilation. In this context, a large number of such systems has to be (approximately) solved if the implicit mode is chosen for integrating the involved diffusion … Read more

How much patience do you have? A worst-case perspective on smooth nonconvex optimization

The paper presents a survey of recent results in the field of worst-case complexity of algorithms for nonlinear (and possibly nonconvex) smooth optimization. Both constrained and unconstrained case are considered. ArticleDownload View PDF

Global convergence and the Powell singular function

The Powell singular function was introduced 1962 by M.J.D. Powell as an unconstrained optimization problem. The function is also used as nonlinear least squares problem and system of nonlinear equations. The function is a classic test function included in collections of test problems in optimization as well as an example problem in text books. In … Read more

On the convergence of the modified Levenberg-Marquardt method with a nonmonotone second order Armijo type line search

Recently, Fan [4, Math. Comput., 81 (2012), pp. 447-466] proposed a modified Levenberg-Marquardt (MLM) method for nonlinear equations. Using a trust region technique, global and cubic convergence of the MLM method is proved [4] under the local error bound condition, which is weaker than nonsingularity. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the convergence … Read more