arXiv subjects

Jennifer B. Erway

Publications and source records attributed to Jennifer B. Erway.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2022

Shape-Changing Trust-Region Methods Using Multipoint Symmetric Secant Matrices

In this work, we consider methods for large-scale and nonconvex unconstrained optimization. We propose a new trust-region method whose subproblem is defined using a so-called "shape-changing" norm together with densely-initialized multipoint symmetric secant (MSS) matrices to approximate the Hessian. Shape-changing norms and dense initializations have been successfully used in the context of traditional quasi-Newton methods, but have yet to be explored in the case of MSS methods. Numerical results suggest that trust-region methods that use densely-initialized MSS matrices together with shape-changing norms outperform MSS with other trust-region methods.

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arXiv2022

A New Multipoint Symmetric Secant Method with a Dense Initial Matrix

In large-scale optimization, when either forming or storing Hessian matrices are prohibitively expensive, quasi-Newton methods are often used in lieu of Newton's method because they only require first-order information to approximate the true Hessian. Multipoint symmetric secant (MSS) methods can be thought of as generalizations of quasi-Newton methods in that they attempt to impose additional requirements on their approximation of the Hessian. Given an initial Hessian approximation, MSS methods generate a sequence of possibly-indefinite matrices using rank-2 updates to solve nonconvex unconstrained optimization problems. For practical reasons, up to now, the initialization has been a constant multiple of the identity matrix. In this paper, we propose a new limited-memory MSS method for large-scale nonconvex optimization that allows for dense initializations. Numerical results on the CUTEst test problems suggest that the MSS method using a dense initialization outperforms the standard initialization. Numerical results also suggest that this approach is competitive with both a basic L-SR1 trust-region method and an L-PSB method.

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arXiv2021

Algorithm XXX: SC-SR1: Matlab software for solving shape-changing L-SR1 trust-region subproblems

We present a MATLAB implementation of the symmetric rank-one (SC-SR1) method that solves trust-region. subproblems when a limited-memory symmetric rank-one (L-SR1) matrix is used in place of the true Hessian matrix, which can be used for large-scale optimization. The method takes advantage of two shape-changing norms[Burdakov and Yuan 2002; Burdakov et al. 2017] to decompose the trust-region subproblem into two separate problems. Using one of the proposed norms, the resulting subproblems have closed-form solutions. Meanwhile, using the other proposed norm, one of the resulting subproblems has a closed-form solution while the other is easily solvable using techniques that exploit the structure of L-SR1 matrices. Numerical results suggest that the SC-SR1 method is able to solve trust-region subproblems to high accuracy even in the so-called "hard case". When integrated into a trust-region algorithm, extensive numerical experiments suggest that the proposed algorithms perform well, when compared with widely used solvers, such as truncated CG.

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arXiv2019

Trust-Region Algorithms for Training Responses: Machine Learning Methods Using Indefinite Hessian Approximations

Machine learning (ML) problems are often posed as highly nonlinear and nonconvex unconstrained optimization problems. Methods for solving ML problems based on stochastic gradient descent are easily scaled for very large problems but may involve fine-tuning many hyper-parameters. Quasi-Newton approaches based on the limited-memory Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) update typically do not require manually tuning hyper-parameters but suffer from approximating a potentially indefinite Hessian with a positive-definite matrix. Hessian-free methods leverage the ability to perform Hessian-vector multiplication without needing the entire Hessian matrix, but each iteration's complexity is significantly greater than quasi-Newton methods. In this paper we propose an alternative approach for solving ML problems based on a quasi-Newton trust-region framework for solving large-scale optimization problems that allow for indefinite Hessian approximations. Numerical experiments on a standard testing data set show that with a fixed computational time budget, the proposed methods achieve better results than the traditional limited-memory BFGS and the Hessian-free methods.

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arXiv2019

A Dense Initialization for Limited-Memory Quasi-Newton Methods

We consider a family of dense initializations for limited-memory quasi-Newton methods. The proposed initialization exploits an eigendecomposition-based separation of the full space into two complementary subspaces, assigning a different initialization parameter to each subspace. This family of dense initializations is proposed in the context of a limited-memory Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (L-BFGS) trust-region method that makes use of a shape-changing norm to define each subproblem. As with L-BFGS methods that traditionally use diagonal initialization, the dense initialization and the sequence of generated quasi-Newton matrices are never explicitly formed. Numerical experiments on the CUTEst test set suggest that this initialization together with the shape-changing trust-region method outperforms other L-BFGS methods for solving general nonconvex unconstrained optimization problems. While this dense initialization is proposed in the context of a special trust-region method, it has broad applications for more general quasi-Newton trust-region and line search methods. In fact, this initialization is suitable for use with any quasi-Newton update that admits a compact representation and, in particular, any member of the Broyden class of updates.

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arXiv2017

Compact representation of the full Broyden class of quasi-Newton updates

In this paper, we present the compact representation for matrices belonging to the the Broyden class of quasi-Newton updates, where each update may be either rank-one or rank-two. This work extends previous results solely for the restricted Broyden class of rank-two updates. In this article, it is not assumed the same Broyden update is used each iteration; rather, different members of the Broyden class may be used each iteration. Numerical experiments suggest that a practical implementation of the compact representation is able to accurately represent matrices belonging to the Broyden class of updates. Furthermore, we demonstrate how to compute the compact representation for the inverse of these matrices, as well as a practical algorithm for solving linear systems with members of the Broyden class of updates. We demonstrate through numerical experiments that the proposed linear solver is able to efficiently solve linear systems with members of the Broyden class of matrices to high accuracy. As an immediate consequence of this work, it is now possible to efficiently compute the eigenvalues of any limited-memory member of the Broyden class of matrices, allowing for the computation of condition numbers and the ability perform sensitivity analysis.

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arXiv2016

On solving large-scale limited-memory quasi-Newton equations

We consider the problem of solving linear systems of equations arising with limited-memory members of the restricted Broyden class of updates and the symmetric rank-one (SR1) update. In this paper, we propose a new approach based on a practical implementation of the compact representation for the inverse of these limited-memory matrices. Numerical results suggest that the proposed method compares favorably in speed and accuracy to other algorithms and is competitive with several update-specific methods available to only a few members of the Broyden class of updates. Using the proposed approach has an additional benefit: The condition number of the system matrix can be computed efficiently.

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arXiv2016

On Solving L-SR1 Trust-Region Subproblems

In this article, we consider solvers for large-scale trust-region subproblems when the quadratic model is defined by a limited-memory symmetric rank-one (L-SR1) quasi-Newton matrix. We propose a solver that exploits the compact representation of L-SR1 matrices. Our approach makes use of both an orthonormal basis for the eigenspace of the L-SR1 matrix and the Sherman-Morrison-Woodbury formula to compute global solutions to trust-region subproblems. To compute the optimal Lagrange multiplier for the trust-region constraint, we use Newton's method with a judicious initial guess that does not require safeguarding. A crucial property of this solver is that it is able to compute high-accuracy solutions even in the so-called hard case. Additionally, the optimal solution is determined directly by formula, not iteratively. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of this solver.

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arXiv2016

Trust-Region Methods for Sparse Relaxation

In this paper, we solve the l2-l1 sparse recovery problem by transforming the objective function of this problem into an unconstrained differentiable function and apply a limited-memory trust-region method. Unlike gradient projection-type methods, which uses only the current gradient, our approach uses gradients from previous iterations to obtain a more accurate Hessian approximation. Numerical experiments show that our proposed approach eliminates spurious solutions more effectively while improving the computational time to converge.

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arXiv2015

On efficiently computing the eigenvalues of limited-memory quasi-Newton matrices

In this paper, we consider the problem of efficiently computing the eigenvalues of limited-memory quasi-Newton matrices that exhibit a compact formulation. In addition, we produce a compact formula for quasi-Newton matrices generated by any member of the Broyden convex class of updates. Our proposed method makes use of efficient updates to the QR factorization that substantially reduces the cost of computing the eigenvalues after the quasi-Newton matrix is updated. Numerical experiments suggest that the proposed method is able to compute eigenvalues to high accuracy. Applications for this work include modified quasi-Newton methods and trust-region methods for large-scale optimization, the efficient computation of condition numbers and singular values, and sensitivity analysis.

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arXiv2013

MSS: MATLAB Software for L-BFGS Trust-Region Subproblems for Large-Scale Optimization

A MATLAB implementation of the More-Sorensen sequential (MSS) method is presented. The MSS method computes the minimizer of a quadratic function defined by a limited-memory BFGS matrix subject to a two-norm trust-region constraint. This solver is an adaptation of the More-Sorensen direct method into an L-BFGS setting for large-scale optimization. The MSS method makes use of a recently proposed stable fast direct method for solving large shifted BFGS systems of equations [13, 12] and is able to compute solutions to any user-defined accuracy. This MATLAB implementation is a matrix-free iterative method for large-scale optimization. Numerical experiments on the CUTEr [3, 16]) suggest that using the MSS method as a trust-region subproblem solver can require significantly fewer function and gradient evaluations needed by a trust-region method as compared with the Steihaug-Toint method.

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arXiv2013

Shifted L-BFGS Systems

We investigate fast direct methods for solving systems of the form (B + G)x = y, where B is a limited-memory BFGS matrix and G is a symmetric positive-definite matrix. These systems, which we refer to as shifted L-BFGS systems, arise in several settings, including trust-region methods and preconditioning techniques for interior-point methods. We show that under mild assumptions, the system (B + G)x = y can be solved in an efficient and stable manner via a recursion that requies only vector inner products. We consider various shift matrices G and demonstrate the effectiveness of the recursion methods in numerical experiments.

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arXiv2012

Limited-memory BFGS Systems with Diagonal Updates

In this paper, we investigate a formula to solve systems of the form (B + σI)x = y, where B is a limited-memory BFGS quasi-Newton matrix and σ is a positive constant. These types of systems arise naturally in large-scale optimization such as trust-region methods as well as doubly-augmented Lagrangian methods. We show that provided a simple condition holds on B_0 and σ, the system (B + σI)x = y can be solved via a recursion formula that requies only vector inner products. This formula has complexity M^2n, where M is the number of L-BFGS updates and n >> M is the dimension of x.

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