The Alternating Minimization Algorithm (AMA) has been proposed by Tseng to solve convex programming problems with two-block separable linear constraints and objectives, whereby (at least) one of the components of the latter is assumed to be strongly convex. The fact that one of the subproblems to be solved within the iteration process of AMA does … Read more
The paper presents a fully explicit algorithm for monotone variational inequalities. The method uses variable stepsizes that are computed using two previous iterates as an approximation of the local Lipschitz constant without running a linesearch. Thus, each iteration of the method requires only one evaluation of a monotone operator $F$ and a proximal mapping $g$. … Read more
Given a non-convex twice continuously differentiable cost function with Lipschitz continuous gradient, we prove that all of the block coordinate gradient descent, block mirror descent and proximal block coordinate descent methods converge to stationary points satisfying the second-order necessary condition, almost surely with random initialization. All our results are ascribed to the center-stable manifold theorem … Read more
Machine learning with big data often involves large optimization models. For distributed optimization over a cluster of machines, frequent communication and synchronization of all model parameters (optimization variables) can be very costly. A promising solution is to use parameter servers to store different subsets of the model parameters, and update them asynchronously at different machines … Read more
In the first part of the paper we focus on two problems: (a) regularized least squares and (b) nonsmooth minimization over an affine subspace. For these problems we establish the connection between the primal-dual method of Chambolle-Pock and Tseng’s proximal gradient method. For problem (a) it allows us to derive a nonergodic $O(1/k^2)$ convergence rate … Read more
We study non-parametric estimation of choice models, which was introduced to alleviate unreasonable assumptions in traditional parametric models, and are prevalent in several application areas. Existing literature focuses only on the static observational setting where all of the observations are given upfront, and lacks algorithms that provide explicit convergence rate guarantees or an a priori … Read more
We consider a two player finite strategic zero-sum game where each player has stochastic linear constraints. We formulate the stochastic constraints of each player as chance constraints. We show the existence of a saddle point equilibrium if the row vectors of the random matrices, defining the stochastic constraints of each player, are elliptically symmetric distributed … Read more
We first point out several flaws in the recent paper {\it [R. Shefi, M. Teboulle: Rate of convergence analysis of decomposition methods based on the proximal method of multipliers for convex minimization, SIAM J. Optim. 24, 269–297, 2014]} that proposes two ADMM-type algorithms for solving convex optimization problems involving compositions with linear operators and show … Read more
PDE-constrained optimization aims at finding optimal setups for partial differential equations so that relevant quantities are minimized. Including sparsity promoting terms in the formulation of such problems results in more practically relevant computed controls but adds more challenges to the numerical solution of these problems. The needed L^1-terms as well as additional inclusion of box … Read more
The paper proposes a linesearch for the primal-dual method. Each iteration of the linesearch requires to update only the dual (or primal) variable. For many problems, in particular for regularized least squares, the linesearch does not require any additional matrix-vector multiplications. We prove convergence of the proposed method under the standard assumptions. We also show … Read more