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Alexander Gasnikov

Publications and source records attributed to Alexander Gasnikov.

At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources

Algorithms for Euclidean-regularised Optimal Transport

This paper addresses the Optimal Transport problem, which is regularized by the square of Euclidean $\ell_2$-norm. It offers theoretical guarantees regarding the iteration complexities of the Sinkhorn--Knopp algorithm, Accelerated Gradient Descent, Accelerated Alternating Minimisation, and Coordinate Linear Variance Reduction algorithms. Furthermore, the paper compares the practical efficiency of these methods and their counterparts when applied to the entropy-regularized Optimal Transport problem. This comparison is conducted through numerical experiments carried out on the MNIST dataset.

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Convergence analysis of stochastic gradient descent with adaptive preconditioning for non-convex and convex functions

Preconditioning is a crucial operation in gradient-based numerical optimisation. It helps decrease the local condition number of a function by appropriately transforming its gradient. For a convex function, where the gradient can be computed exactly, the optimal linear transformation corresponds to the inverse of the Hessian operator, while the optimal convex transformation is the convex conjugate of the function. Different conditions result in variations of these dependencies. Practical algorithms often employ low-rank or stochastic approximations of the inverse Hessian matrix for preconditioning. However, theoretical guarantees for these algorithms typically lack a justification for the defining property of preconditioning. This paper presents a simple theoretical framework that demonstrates, given a smooth function and an available unbiased stochastic approximation of its gradient, that it is possible to refine the dependency of the convergence rate on the Lipschitz constant of the gradient.

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Gradient-Free Methods for Non-Smooth Convex Stochastic Optimization with Heavy-Tailed Noise on Convex Compact

We present two easy-to-implement gradient-free/zeroth-order methods to optimize a stochastic non-smooth function accessible only via a black-box. The methods are built upon efficient first-order methods in the heavy-tailed case, i.e., when the gradient noise has infinite variance but bounded $(1+κ)$-th moment for some $κ\in(0,1]$. The first algorithm is based on the stochastic mirror descent with a particular class of uniformly convex mirror maps which is robust to heavy-tailed noise. The second algorithm is based on the stochastic mirror descent and gradient clipping technique. Additionally, for the objective functions satisfying the $r$-growth condition, faster algorithms are proposed based on these methods and the restart technique.

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Near-optimal tensor methods for minimizing the gradient norm of convex functions and accelerated primal-dual tensor methods

Motivated, in particular, by the entropy-regularized optimal transport problem, we consider convex optimization problems with linear equality constraints, where the dual objective has Lipschitz $p$-th order derivatives, and develop two approaches for solving such problems. The first approach is based on the minimization of the norm of the gradient in the dual problem and then the reconstruction of an approximate primal solution. Recently, Grapiglia and Nesterov in their work showed lower complexity bounds for the problem of minimizing the gradient norm of the function with Lipschitz $p$-th order derivatives. Still, the question of optimal or near-optimal methods remained open as the algorithms presented in the paper achieve suboptimal bounds only. We close this gap by proposing two near-optimal (up to logarithmic factors) methods with complexity bounds $\tilde{O}(\varepsilon^{-2(p+1)/(3p+1)})$ and $\tilde{O}(\varepsilon^{-2/(3p+1)})$ with respect to the initial objective residual and the distance between the starting point and solution respectively. We then apply these results (having independent interest) to our primal-dual setting. As the second approach, we propose a direct accelerated primal-dual tensor method for convex problems with linear equality constraints, where the dual objective has Lipschitz $p$-th order derivatives. For this algorithm, we prove $\tilde O (\varepsilon^{-1 / (p + 1)})$ complexity in terms of the duality gap and the residual in the constraints. We illustrate the practical performance of the proposed algorithms in experiments on logistic regression, entropy-regularized optimal transport problem, and the minimal mutual information problem.

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Decentralized Convex Optimization on Time-Varying Networks with Application to Wasserstein Barycenters

Inspired by recent advances in distributed algorithms for approximating Wasserstein barycenters, we propose a novel distributed algorithm for this problem. The main novelty is that we consider time-varying computational networks, which are motivated by examples when only a subset of sensors can make an observation at each time step, and yet, the goal is to average signals (e.g., satellite pictures of some area) by approximating their barycenter. We embed this problem into a class of non-smooth dual-friendly distributed optimization problems over time-varying networks, and develop a first-order method for this class. We prove non-asymptotic accelerated in the sense of Nesterov convergence rates and explicitly characterise their dependence on the parameters of the network and its dynamics. In the experiments, we demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm when applied to the Wasserstein barycenter problem.

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Optimal Algorithm with Complexity Separation for Strongly Convex-Strongly Concave Composite Saddle Point Problems

In this work, we focuses on the following saddle point problem $\min_x \max_y p(x) + R(x,y) - q(y)$ where $R(x,y)$ is $L_R$-smooth, $μ_x$-strongly convex, $μ_y$-strongly concave and $p(x), q(y)$ are convex and $L_p, L_q$-smooth respectively. We present a new algorithm with optimal overall complexity $\mathcal{O}\left(\left(\sqrt{\frac{L_p}{μ_x}} + \frac{L_R}{\sqrt{μ_x μ_y}} + \sqrt{\frac{L_q}{μ_y}}\right)\log \frac{1}{\varepsilon}\right)$ and separation of oracle calls in the composite and saddle part. This algorithm requires $\mathcal{O}\left(\left(\sqrt{\frac{L_p}{μ_x}} + \sqrt{\frac{L_q}{μ_y}}\right) \log \frac{1}{\varepsilon}\right)$ oracle calls for $\nabla p(x)$ and $\nabla q(y)$ and $\mathcal{O} \left( \max\left\{\sqrt{\frac{L_p}{μ_x}}, \sqrt{\frac{L_q}{μ_y}}, \frac{L_R}{\sqrt{μ_x μ_y}} \right\}\log \frac{1}{\varepsilon}\right)$ oracle calls for $\nabla R(x,y)$ to find an $\varepsilon$-solution of the problem. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to develop optimal algorithm with complexity separation in the case $μ_x \not = μ_y$. Also, we apply this algorithm to a bilinear saddle point problem and obtain the optimal complexity for this class of problems.

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Decentralized Optimization Over Slowly Time-Varying Graphs: Algorithms and Lower Bounds

We consider a decentralized convex unconstrained optimization problem, where the cost function can be decomposed into a sum of strongly convex and smooth functions, associated with individual agents, interacting over a static or time-varying network. Our main concern is the convergence rate of first-order optimization algorithms as a function of the network's graph, more specifically, of the condition numbers of gossip matrices. We are interested in the case when the network is time-varying but the rate of changes is restricted. We study two cases: randomly changing network satisfying Markov property and a network changing in a deterministic manner. For the random case, we propose a decentralized optimization algorithm with accelerated consensus. For the deterministic scenario, we show that if the graph is changing in a worst-case way, accelerated consensus is not possible even if only two edges are changed at each iteration. The fact that such a low rate of network changes is sufficient to make accelerated consensus impossible is novel and improves the previous results in the literature.

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Decentralized conditional gradient method over time-varying graphs

In this paper we study a generalization of distributed conditional gradient method to time-varying network architectures. We theoretically analyze convergence properties of the algorithm and provide numerical experiments. The time-varying network is modeled as a deterministic of a stochastic sequence of graphs.

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On accelerated coordinate descent methods for searching equilibria in two-stage transportation equilibrium traffic flow distribution model

The search for equilibrium in a two-stage traffic flow model reduces to the solution of a special nonsmooth convex optimization problem with two groups of different variables. For numerical solution of this problem, the paper proposes to use the accelerated block-coordinate Nesterov-Stich method with a special choice of block probabilities at each iteration. Theoretical estimates of the complexity of this approach can markedly improve the estimates of previously used approaches. However, in the general case they do not guarantee faster convergence. Numerical experiments with the proposed algorithms are carried out in the paper.

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High-Probability Bounds for Stochastic Optimization and Variational Inequalities: the Case of Unbounded Variance

During recent years the interest of optimization and machine learning communities in high-probability convergence of stochastic optimization methods has been growing. One of the main reasons for this is that high-probability complexity bounds are more accurate and less studied than in-expectation ones. However, SOTA high-probability non-asymptotic convergence results are derived under strong assumptions such as the boundedness of the gradient noise variance or of the objective's gradient itself. In this paper, we propose several algorithms with high-probability convergence results under less restrictive assumptions. In particular, we derive new high-probability convergence results under the assumption that the gradient/operator noise has bounded central $α$-th moment for $α\in (1,2]$ in the following setups: (i) smooth non-convex / Polyak-Lojasiewicz / convex / strongly convex / quasi-strongly convex minimization problems, (ii) Lipschitz / star-cocoercive and monotone / quasi-strongly monotone variational inequalities. These results justify the usage of the considered methods for solving problems that do not fit standard functional classes studied in stochastic optimization.

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Primal-Dual Gradient Methods for Searching Network Equilibria in Combined Models with Nested Choice Structure and Capacity Constraints

We consider a network equilibrium model (i.e. a combined model), which was proposed as an alternative to the classic four-step approach for travel forecasting in transportation networks. This model can be formulated as a convex minimization program. We extend the combined model to the case of the stable dynamics (SD) model in the traffic assignment stage, which imposes strict capacity constraints in the network. We propose a way to solve corresponding dual optimization problems with accelerated gradient methods and give theoretical guarantees of their convergence. We conducted numerical experiments with considered optimization methods on Moscow and Berlin networks.

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On Scaled Methods for Saddle Point Problems

Methods with adaptive scaling of different features play a key role in solving saddle point problems, primarily due to Adam's popularity for solving adversarial machine learning problems, including GANS training. This paper carries out a theoretical analysis of the following scaling techniques for solving SPPs: the well-known Adam and RmsProp scaling and the newer AdaHessian and OASIS based on Hutchison approximation. We use the Extra Gradient and its improved version with negative momentum as the basic method. Experimental studies on GANs show good applicability not only for Adam, but also for other less popular methods.

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Sufficient conditions for multi-stages traffic assignment model to be the convex optimization problem

In this paper we consider multi-stages traffic assignment with several demand layers, user types and network types. We consider two stages: demand matrix calculation (Entropy Wilson's model) and traffic assignment models (Beckmann or Nesterov--de Palma). For the traffic assignment stage we use dual reformulation and combine these stages as a saddle-point problem (convex-concave). Then we discuss how one can solve this problem numerically.

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Zero-Order Stochastic Conditional Gradient Sliding Method for Non-smooth Convex Optimization

The conditional gradient idea proposed by Marguerite Frank and Philip Wolfe in 1956 was so well received by the community that new algorithms (also called Frank--Wolfe type algorithms) are still being actively created. In this paper, we study a non-smooth stochastic convex optimization problem with constraints. Using a smoothing technique and based on an accelerated batched first-order Stochastic Conditional Gradient Sliding method, we propose a novel gradient-free Frank--Wolfe type algorithm called Zero-Order Stochastic Conditional Gradient Sliding (ZO-SCGS). This algorithm is robust not only for the class of non-smooth problems, but surprisingly also for the class of smooth black box problems, outperforming the SOTA algorithms in the smooth case in term oracle calls. In practical experiments we confirm our theoretical results.

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Gradient-Free Federated Learning Methods with $l_1$ and $l_2$-Randomization for Non-Smooth Convex Stochastic Optimization Problems

This paper studies non-smooth problems of convex stochastic optimization. Using the smoothing technique based on the replacement of the function value at the considered point by the averaged function value over a ball (in $l_1$-norm or $l_2$-norm) of small radius with the center in this point, the original problem is reduced to a smooth problem (whose Lipschitz constant of the gradient is inversely proportional to the radius of the ball). An important property of the smoothing used is the possibility to calculate an unbiased estimation of the gradient of a smoothed function based only on realizations of the original function. The obtained smooth stochastic optimization problem is proposed to be solved in a distributed federated learning architecture (the problem is solved in parallel: nodes make local steps, e.g. stochastic gradient descent, then they communicate - all with all, then all this is repeated). The goal of this paper is to build on the current advances in gradient-free non-smooth optimization and in feild of federated learning, gradient-free methods for solving non-smooth stochastic optimization problems in federated learning architecture.

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Accelerated Methods for $α$-Weakly-Quasi-Convex Problems

We provide a quick overview of the class of $α$-weakly-quasi-convex problems and its relationships with other problem classes. We show that the previously known Sequential Subspace Optimization method retains its optimal convergence rate when applied to minimization problems with smooth $α$-weakly-quasi-convex objectives. We also show that Nemirovski's conjugate gradients method of strongly convex minimization achieves its optimal convergence rate under weaker conditions of $α$-weak-quasi-convexity and quad\-ratic growth. Previously known results only capture the special case of 1-weak-quasi-convexity or give convergence rates with worse dependence on the parameter $α$.

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Decentralized convex optimization over time-varying graphs: a survey

Decentralized optimization over time-varying networks has a wide range of applications in distributed learning, signal processing and various distributed control problems. The agents of the distributed system locally hold optimization objectives and can communicate to their immediate neighbors over a network that changes from time to time. In this paper, we survey state-of-the-art results and describe the techniques for optimization over time-varying graphs. We also give an overview of open questions in the field and formulate hypotheses and directions for future work.

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Decentralized Proximal Optimization Method with Consensus Procedure

Decentralized optimization is well studied for smooth unconstrained problems. However, constrained problems or problems with composite terms are an open direction for research. We study structured (or composite) optimization problems, where the functional is a sum of a convex smooth function and a proper convex proximal-friendly term. Our method builds upon an accelerated proximal gradient descent and makes several consensus iterations between computations. Our result illustrates that a consensus procedure approach works for composite optimization and yields a method with a relatively simple structure and analysis.

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