arXiv subjects

Kim-Chuan Toh

Publications and source records attributed to Kim-Chuan Toh.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

A Corrected Inexact Proximal Augmented Lagrangian Method with a Relative Error Criterion for a Class of Group-quadratic Regularized Optimal Transport Problems

The optimal transport (OT) problem and its related problems have attracted significant attention and have been extensively studied in various applications. In this paper, we focus on a class of group-quadratic regularized OT problems which aim to find solutions with specialized structures that are advantageous in practical scenarios. To solve this class of problems, we propose a corrected inexact proximal augmented Lagrangian method (ciPALM), with the subproblems being solved by the semi-smooth Newton ({\sc Ssn}) method. We establish that the proposed method exhibits appealing convergence properties under mild conditions. Moreover, our ciPALM distinguishes itself from the recently developed semismooth Newton-based inexact proximal augmented Lagrangian ({\sc Snipal}) method for linear programming. Specifically, {\sc Snipal} uses an absolute error criterion for the approximate minimization of the subproblem for which a summable sequence of tolerance parameters needs to be pre-specified for practical implementations. In contrast, our ciPALM adopts a relative error criterion with a \textit{single} tolerance parameter, which would be more friendly to tune from computational and implementation perspectives. These favorable properties position our ciPALM as a promising candidate for tackling large-scale problems. Various numerical studies validate the effectiveness of employing a relative error criterion for the inexact proximal augmented Lagrangian method, and also demonstrate that our ciPALM is competitive for solving large-scale group-quadratic regularized OT problems.

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arXiv2024

Adam-family Methods for Nonsmooth Optimization with Convergence Guarantees

In this paper, we present a comprehensive study on the convergence properties of Adam-family methods for nonsmooth optimization, especially in the training of nonsmooth neural networks. We introduce a novel two-timescale framework that adopts a two-timescale updating scheme, and prove its convergence properties under mild assumptions. Our proposed framework encompasses various popular Adam-family methods, providing convergence guarantees for these methods in training nonsmooth neural networks. Furthermore, we develop stochastic subgradient methods that incorporate gradient clipping techniques for training nonsmooth neural networks with heavy-tailed noise. Through our framework, we show that our proposed methods converge even when the evaluation noises are only assumed to be integrable. Extensive numerical experiments demonstrate the high efficiency and robustness of our proposed methods.

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arXiv2024

Wasserstein distributionally robust optimization and its tractable regularization formulations

We study a variety of Wasserstein distributionally robust optimization (WDRO) problems where the distributions in the ambiguity set are chosen by constraining their Wasserstein discrepancies to the empirical distribution. Using the notion of weak Lipschitz property, we derive lower and upper bounds of the corresponding worst-case loss quantity and propose sufficient conditions under which this quantity coincides with its regularization scheme counterpart. Our constructive methodology and elementary analysis also directly characterize the closed-form of the approximate worst-case distribution. Extensive applications show that our theoretical results are applicable to various problems, including regression, classification and risk measure problems.

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arXiv2023

On Partial Optimal Transport: Revising the Infeasibility of Sinkhorn and Efficient Gradient Methods

This paper studies the Partial Optimal Transport (POT) problem between two unbalanced measures with at most $n$ supports and its applications in various AI tasks such as color transfer or domain adaptation. There is hence the need for fast approximations of POT with increasingly large problem sizes in arising applications. We first theoretically and experimentally investigate the infeasibility of the state-of-the-art Sinkhorn algorithm for POT due to its incompatible rounding procedure, which consequently degrades its qualitative performance in real world applications like point-cloud registration. To this end, we propose a novel rounding algorithm for POT, and then provide a feasible Sinkhorn procedure with a revised computation complexity of $\mathcal{\widetilde O}(n^2/\varepsilon^4)$. Our rounding algorithm also permits the development of two first-order methods to approximate the POT problem. The first algorithm, Adaptive Primal-Dual Accelerated Gradient Descent (APDAGD), finds an $\varepsilon$-approximate solution to the POT problem in $\mathcal{\widetilde O}(n^{2.5}/\varepsilon)$, which is better in $\varepsilon$ than revised Sinkhorn. The second method, Dual Extrapolation, achieves the computation complexity of $\mathcal{\widetilde O}(n^2/\varepsilon)$, thereby being the best in the literature. We further demonstrate the flexibility of POT compared to standard OT as well as the practicality of our algorithms on real applications where two marginal distributions are unbalanced.

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arXiv2023

A feasible method for general convex low-rank SDP problems

In this work, we consider the low rank decomposition (SDPR) of general convex semidefinite programming problems (SDP) that contain both a positive semidefinite matrix and a nonnegative vector as variables. We develop a rank-support-adaptive feasible method to solve (SDPR) based on Riemannian optimization. The method is able to escape from a saddle point to ensure its convergence to a global optimal solution for generic constraint vectors. We prove its global convergence and local linear convergence without assuming that the objective function is twice differentiable. Due to the special structure of the low-rank SDP problem, our algorithm can achieve better iteration complexity than existing results for more general smooth nonconvex problems. In order to overcome the degeneracy issues of SDP problems, we develop two strategies based on random perturbation and dual refinement. These techniques enable us to solve some primal degenerate SDP problems efficiently, for example, Lovász theta SDPs. Our work is a step forward in extending the application range of Riemannian optimization approaches for solving SDP problems. Numerical experiments are conducted to verify the efficiency and robustness of our method.

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arXiv2023

Adam-family Methods with Decoupled Weight Decay in Deep Learning

In this paper, we investigate the convergence properties of a wide class of Adam-family methods for minimizing quadratically regularized nonsmooth nonconvex optimization problems, especially in the context of training nonsmooth neural networks with weight decay. Motivated by the AdamW method, we propose a novel framework for Adam-family methods with decoupled weight decay. Within our framework, the estimators for the first-order and second-order moments of stochastic subgradients are updated independently of the weight decay term. Under mild assumptions and with non-diminishing stepsizes for updating the primary optimization variables, we establish the convergence properties of our proposed framework. In addition, we show that our proposed framework encompasses a wide variety of well-known Adam-family methods, hence offering convergence guarantees for these methods in the training of nonsmooth neural networks. More importantly, we show that our proposed framework asymptotically approximates the SGD method, thereby providing an explanation for the empirical observation that decoupled weight decay enhances generalization performance for Adam-family methods. As a practical application of our proposed framework, we propose a novel Adam-family method named Adam with Decoupled Weight Decay (AdamD), and establish its convergence properties under mild conditions. Numerical experiments demonstrate that AdamD outperforms Adam and is comparable to AdamW, in the aspects of both generalization performance and efficiency.

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arXiv2023

On Regularized Square-root Regression Problems: Distributionally Robust Interpretation and Fast Computations

Square-root (loss) regularized models have recently become popular in linear regression due to their nice statistical properties. Moreover, some of these models can be interpreted as the distributionally robust optimization counterparts of the traditional least-squares regularized models. In this paper, we give a unified proof to show that any square-root regularized model whose penalty function being the sum of a simple norm and a seminorm can be interpreted as the distributionally robust optimization (DRO) formulation of the corresponding least-squares problem. In particular, the optimal transport cost in the DRO formulation is given by a certain dual form of the penalty. To solve the resulting square-root regularized model whose loss function and penalty function are both nonsmooth, we design a proximal point dual semismooth Newton algorithm and demonstrate its efficiency when the penalty is the sparse group Lasso penalty or the fused Lasso penalty. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our algorithm is highly efficient for solving the square-root sparse group Lasso problems and the square-root fused Lasso problems.

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arXiv2023

Learning Graph Laplacian with MCP

We consider the problem of learning a graph under the Laplacian constraint with a non-convex penalty: minimax concave penalty (MCP). For solving the MCP penalized graphical model, we design an inexact proximal difference-of-convex algorithm (DCA) and prove its convergence to critical points. We note that each subproblem of the proximal DCA enjoys the nice property that the objective function in its dual problem is continuously differentiable with a semismooth gradient. Therefore, we apply an efficient semismooth Newton method to subproblems of the proximal DCA. Numerical experiments on various synthetic and real data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of the non-convex penalty MCP in promoting sparsity. Compared with the existing state-of-the-art method, our method is demonstrated to be more efficient and reliable for learning graph Laplacian with MCP.

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arXiv2023

Self-adaptive ADMM for semi-strongly convex problems

In this paper, we develop a self-adaptive ADMM that updates the penalty parameter adaptively. When one part of the objective function is strongly convex i.e., the problem is semi-strongly convex, our algorithm can update the penalty parameter adaptively with guaranteed convergence. We establish various types of convergence results including accelerated convergence rate of O(1/k^2), linear convergence and convergence of iteration points. This enhances various previous results because we allow the penalty parameter to change adaptively. We also develop a partial proximal point method with the subproblem solved by our adaptive ADMM. This enables us to solve problems without semi-strongly convex property. Numerical experiments are conducted to demonstrate the high efficiency and robustness of our method.

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arXiv2023

Quantifying low rank approximations of third order symmetric tensors

In this paper, we present a method to certify the approximation quality of a low rank tensor to a given third order symmetric tensor. Under mild assumptions, best low rank approximation is attained if a control parameter is zero or quantified quasi-optimal low rank approximation is obtained if the control parameter is positive.This is based on a primal-dual method for computing a low rank approximation for a given tensor. The certification is derived from the global optimality of the primal and dual problems, and is characterized by easily checkable relations between the primal and the dual solutions together with another rank condition. The theory is verified theoretically for orthogonally decomposable tensors as well as numerically through examples in the general case.

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arXiv2023

A Highly Efficient Algorithm for Solving Exclusive Lasso Problems

The exclusive lasso (also known as elitist lasso) regularizer has become popular recently due to its superior performance on intra-group feature selection. Its complex nature poses difficulties for the computation of high-dimensional machine learning models involving such a regularizer. In this paper, we propose a highly efficient dual Newton method based proximal point algorithm (PPDNA) for solving large-scale exclusive lasso models. As important ingredients, we systematically study the proximal mapping of the weighted exclusive lasso regularizer and the corresponding generalized Jacobian. These results also make popular first-order algorithms for solving exclusive lasso models more practical. Extensive numerical results are presented to demonstrate the superior performance of the PPDNA against other popular numerical algorithms for solving the exclusive lasso problems.

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arXiv2023

A Riemannian Dimension-reduced Second Order Method with Application in Sensor Network Localization

In this paper, we propose a cubic-regularized Riemannian optimization method (RDRSOM), which partially exploits the second order information and achieves the iteration complexity of $\mathcal{O}(1/ε^{3/2})$. In order to reduce the per-iteration computational cost, we further propose a practical version of (RDRSOM), which is an extension of the well known Barzilai-Borwein method and achieves the iteration complexity of $\mathcal{O}(1/ε^{3/2})$. We apply our method to solve a nonlinear formulation of the wireless sensor network localization problem whose feasible set is a Riemannian manifold that has not been considered in the literature before. Numerical experiments are conducted to verify the high efficiency of our algorithm compared to state-of-the-art Riemannian optimization methods and other nonlinear solvers.

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arXiv2023

A Partial Exact Penalty Function Approach for Constrained Optimization

In this paper, we focus on a class of constrained nonlinear optimization problems (NLP), where some of its equality constraints define a closed embedded submanifold $\mathcal{M}$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$. Although NLP can be solved directly by various existing approaches for constrained optimization in Euclidean space, these approaches usually fail to recognize the manifold structure of $\mathcal{M}$. To achieve better efficiency by utilizing the manifold structure of $\mathcal{M}$ in directly applying these existing optimization approaches, we propose a partial penalty function approach for NLP. In our proposed penalty function approach, we transform NLP into the corresponding constraint dissolving problem (CDP) in the Euclidean space, where the constraints that define $\mathcal{M}$ are eliminated through exact penalization. We establish the relationships on the constraint qualifications between NLP and CDP, and prove that NLP and CDP have the same stationary points and KKT points in a neighborhood of the feasible region under mild conditions. Therefore, various existing optimization approaches developed for constrained optimization in the Euclidean space can be directly applied to solve NLP through CDP. Preliminary numerical experiments demonstrate that by dissolving the constraints that define $\mathcal{M}$, CDP gains superior computational efficiency when compared to directly applying existing optimization approaches to solve NLP, especially in high dimensional scenarios.

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arXiv2023

On proximal augmented Lagrangian based decomposition methods for dual block-angular convex composite programming problems

We design inexact proximal augmented Lagrangian based decomposition methods for convex composite programming problems with dual block-angular structures. Our methods are particularly well suited for convex quadratic programming problems arising from stochastic programming models. The algorithmic framework is based on the application of the abstract inexact proximal ADMM framework developed in [Chen, Sun, Toh, Math. Prog. 161:237--270] to the dual of the target problem, as well as the application of the recently developed symmetric Gauss-Seidel decomposition theorem for solving a proximal multi-block convex composite quadratic programming problem. The key issues in our algorithmic design are firstly in designing appropriate proximal terms to decompose the computation of the dual variable blocks of the target problem to make the subproblems in each iteration easier to solve, and secondly to develop novel numerical schemes to solve the decomposed subproblems efficiently. Our inexact augmented Lagrangian based decomposition methods have guaranteed convergence. We present an application of the proposed algorithms to the doubly nonnegative relaxations of uncapacitated facility location problems, as well as to two-stage stochastic optimization problems. We conduct numerous numerical experiments to evaluate the performance of our method against state-of-the-art solvers such as Gurobi and MOSEK. Moreover, our proposed algorithms also compare favourably to the well-known progressive hedging algorithm of Rockafellar and Wets.

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arXiv2023

A feasible method for solving an SDP relaxation of the quadratic knapsack problem

In this paper, we consider an SDP relaxation of the quadratic knapsack problem (QKP). After using the Burer-Monteiro factorization, we get a non-convex optimization problem, whose feasible region is an algebraic variety. Although there might be non-regular points on the algebraic variety, we prove that the algebraic variety is a smooth manifold except for a trivial point for a generic input data. We also analyze the local geometric properties of non-regular points on this algebraic variety. In order to maintain the equivalence between the SDP problem and its non-convex formulation, we derive a new rank condition under which these two problems are equivalent. This new rank condition can be much weaker than the classical rank condition if the coefficient matrix has certain special structures. We also prove that under an appropriate rank condition, any second order stationary point of the non-convex problem is also a global optimal solution without any regularity assumption. This result is distinguished from previous results based on LICQ-like smoothness assumption. With all these theoretical properties, we design an algorithm that equip a manifold optimization method with a strategy to escape from non-optimal non-regular points. Our algorithm can also be used as a heuristic for solving the quadratic knapsack problem. Numerical experiments are conducted to verify the high efficiency and robustness of our algorithm as compared to other SDP solvers and a heuristic method based on dynamic programming. In particular, our algorithm is able to solve the SDP relaxation of a one-million dimensional QKP with a sparse cost matrix very accurately in about 20 minutes on a modest desktop computer.

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arXiv2023

A Constraint Dissolving Approach for Nonsmooth Optimization over the Stiefel Manifold

This paper focus on the minimization of a possibly nonsmooth objective function over the Stiefel manifold. The existing approaches either lack efficiency or can only tackle prox-friendly objective functions. We propose a constraint dissolving function named NCDF and show that it has the same first-order stationary points and local minimizers as the original problem in a neighborhood of the Stiefel manifold. Furthermore, we show that the Clarke subdifferential of NCDF is easy to achieve from the Clarke subdifferential of the objective function. Therefore, various existing approaches for unconstrained nonsmooth optimization can be directly applied to nonsmooth optimization problems over the Stiefel manifold. We propose a framework for developing subgradient-based methods and establish their convergence properties based on prior works. Furthermore, based on our proposed framework, we can develop efficient approaches for optimization over the Stiefel manifold. Preliminary numerical experiments further highlight that the proposed constraint dissolving approach yields efficient and direct implementations of various unconstrained approaches to nonsmooth optimization problems over the Stiefel manifold.

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arXiv2022

An Improved Unconstrained Approach for Bilevel Optimization

In this paper, we focus on the nonconvex-strongly-convex bilevel optimization problem (BLO). In this BLO, the objective function of the upper-level problem is nonconvex and possibly nonsmooth, and the lower-level problem is smooth and strongly convex with respect to the underlying variable $y$. We show that the feasible region of BLO is a Riemannian manifold. Then we transform BLO to its corresponding unconstrained constraint dissolving problem (CDB), whose objective function is explicitly formulated from the objective functions in BLO. We prove that BLO is equivalent to the unconstrained optimization problem CDB. Therefore, various efficient unconstrained approaches, together with their theoretical results, can be directly applied to BLO through CDB. We propose a unified framework for developing subgradient-based methods for CDB. Remarkably, we show that several existing efficient algorithms can fit the unified framework and be interpreted as descent algorithms for CDB. These examples further demonstrate the great potential of our proposed approach.

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arXiv2022

Dissolving Constraints for Riemannian Optimization

In this paper, we consider optimization problems over closed embedded submanifolds of $\mathbb{R}^n$, which are defined by the constraints $c(x) = 0$. We propose a class of constraint dissolving approaches for these Riemannian optimization problems. In these proposed approaches, solving a Riemannian optimization problem is transferred into the unconstrained minimization of a constraint dissolving function named CDF. Different from existing exact penalty functions, the exact gradient and Hessian of CDF are easy to compute. We study the theoretical properties of CDF and prove that the original problem and CDF have the same first-order and second-order stationary points, local minimizers, and Łojasiewicz exponents in a neighborhood of the feasible region. Remarkably, the convergence properties of our proposed constraint dissolving approaches can be directly inherited from the existing rich results in unconstrained optimization. Therefore, the proposed constraint dissolving approaches build up short cuts from unconstrained optimization to Riemannian optimization. Several illustrative examples further demonstrate the potential of our proposed constraint dissolving approaches.

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