Successive quadratic approximations, or second-order proximal methods, are useful for minimizing functions that are a sum of a smooth part and a convex, possibly nonsmooth part that promotes regularization. Most analyses of iteration complexity focus on the special case of proximal gradient method, or accelerated variants thereof. There have been only a few studies of … Read more
We present a simple scheme for restarting first-order methods for convex optimization problems. Restarts are made based only on achieving specified decreases in objective values, the specified amounts being the same for all optimization problems. Unlike existing restart schemes, the scheme makes no attempt to learn parameter values characterizing the structure of an optimization problem, … Read more
Block coordinate descent (BCD) methods are widely-used for large-scale numerical optimization because of their cheap iteration costs, low memory requirements, amenability to parallelization, and ability to exploit problem structure. Three main algorithmic choices influence the performance of BCD methods: the block partitioning strategy, the block selection rule, and the block update rule. In this paper … Read more
We generalize the classic convergence rate theory for subgradient methods to apply to non-Lipschitz functions via a new measure of steepness. For the deterministic projected subgradient method, we derive a global $O(1/\sqrt{T})$ convergence rate for any function with at most exponential growth. Our approach implies generalizations of the standard convergence rates for gradient descent on … Read more
It has long been known that the gradient (steepest descent) method may fail on nonsmooth problems, but the examples that have appeared in the literature are either devised specifically to defeat a gradient or subgradient method with an exact line search or are unstable with respect to perturbation of the initial point. We give an … Read more
This work is devoted to studying a family of Middle Proximal Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (MP-ADM) for solving multi-block constrained separable convex optimization. Such one-parameter family of MP-ADM combines both Jacobian and Gauss-Seidel types of alternating direction method, and proximal point techniques are only applied to the middle subproblems to promote the convergence. We … Read more
As one of the most plausible convex optimization methods for sparse data reconstruction, $\ell_1$-minimization plays a fundamental role in the development of sparse optimization theory. The stability of this method has been addressed in the literature under various assumptions such as restricted isometry property (RIP), null space property (NSP), and mutual coherence. In this paper, … Read more
We consider the generalized alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) for linearly constrained convex optimization. Many problems derived from practical applications have showed that usually one of the subproblems in the generalized ADMM is hard to solve, thus a special proximal term is added. In the literature, the proximal term can be inde nite which plays … Read more
The accelerated gradient algorithm is known to have non-monotonic, periodic convergence behavior in the high momentum regime. If important function parameters like the condition number are known, the momentum can be adjusted to get linear convergence. Unfortunately these parameters are usually not accessible, so instead heuristics are used for deciding when to restart. One of … Read more
In recent years, techniques based on convex optimization and real algebra that produce converging hierarchies of lower bounds for polynomial minimization problems have gained much popularity. At their heart, these hierarchies rely crucially on Positivstellens\”atze from the late 20th century (e.g., due to Stengle, Putinar, or Schm\”udgen) that certify positivity of a polynomial on an … Read more