Adaptive sampling strategies for risk-averse stochastic optimization with constraints

We introduce adaptive sampling methods for risk-neutral and risk-averse stochastic programs with deterministic constraints. In particular, we propose a variant of the stochastic projected gradient method where the sample size used to approximate the reduced gradient is determined a posteriori and updated adaptively. We also propose an SQP-type method based on similar adaptive sampling principles. Both methods lead to a significant reduction in cost. Numerical experiments from finance and engineering illustrate the performance and efficacy of the presented algorithms. The methods here are applicable to a broad class of expectation-based risk measures, however, we focus mainly on expected risk and conditional value-at-risk minimization problems

Bayesian Optimization for Adaptive MCMC

This paper proposes a new randomized strategy for adaptive MCMC using Bayesian optimization. This approach applies to non-differentiable objective functions and trades off exploration and exploitation to reduce the number of potentially costly objective function evaluations. We demonstrate the strategy in the complex setting of sampling from constrained, discrete and densely connected probabilistic graphical models where, for each variation of the problem, one needs to adjust the parameters of the proposal mechanism automatically to ensure efficient mixing of the Markov chains.Comment: This paper contains 12 pages and 6 figures. A similar version of this paper has been submitted to AISTATS 2012 and is currently under revie

Patterns of Scalable Bayesian Inference

Datasets are growing not just in size but in complexity, creating a demand for rich models and quantification of uncertainty. Bayesian methods are an excellent fit for this demand, but scaling Bayesian inference is a challenge. In response to this challenge, there has been considerable recent work based on varying assumptions about model structure, underlying computational resources, and the importance of asymptotic correctness. As a result, there is a zoo of ideas with few clear overarching principles. In this paper, we seek to identify unifying principles, patterns, and intuitions for scaling Bayesian inference. We review existing work on utilizing modern computing resources with both MCMC and variational approximation techniques. From this taxonomy of ideas, we characterize the general principles that have proven successful for designing scalable inference procedures and comment on the path forward

Sequential Design for Ranking Response Surfaces

We propose and analyze sequential design methods for the problem of ranking several response surfaces. Namely, given $L \ge 2$ response surfaces over a continuous input space $\cal X$, the aim is to efficiently find the index of the minimal response across the entire $\cal X$. The response surfaces are not known and have to be noisily sampled one-at-a-time. This setting is motivated by stochastic control applications and requires joint experimental design both in space and response-index dimensions. To generate sequential design heuristics we investigate stepwise uncertainty reduction approaches, as well as sampling based on posterior classification complexity. We also make connections between our continuous-input formulation and the discrete framework of pure regret in multi-armed bandits. To model the response surfaces we utilize kriging surrogates. Several numerical examples using both synthetic data and an epidemics control problem are provided to illustrate our approach and the efficacy of respective adaptive designs.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figures (updated several sections and figures

Faster Coordinate Descent via Adaptive Importance Sampling

Coordinate descent methods employ random partial updates of decision variables in order to solve huge-scale convex optimization problems. In this work, we introduce new adaptive rules for the random selection of their updates. By adaptive, we mean that our selection rules are based on the dual residual or the primal-dual gap estimates and can change at each iteration. We theoretically characterize the performance of our selection rules and demonstrate improvements over the state-of-the-art, and extend our theory and algorithms to general convex objectives. Numerical evidence with hinge-loss support vector machines and Lasso confirm that the practice follows the theory.Comment: appearing at AISTATS 201

Block-Randomized Gradient Descent Methods with Importance Sampling for CP Tensor Decomposition

This work considers the problem of computing the CANDECOMP/PARAFAC (CP) decomposition of large tensors. One popular way is to translate the problem into a sequence of overdetermined least squares subproblems with Khatri-Rao product (KRP) structure. In this work, for tensor with different levels of importance in each fiber, combining stochastic optimization with randomized sampling, we present a mini-batch stochastic gradient descent algorithm with importance sampling for those special least squares subproblems. Four different sampling strategies are provided. They can avoid forming the full KRP or corresponding probabilities and sample the desired fibers from the original tensor directly. Moreover, a more practical algorithm with adaptive step size is also given. For the proposed algorithms, we present their convergence properties and numerical performance. The results on synthetic data show that our algorithms outperform the existing algorithms in terms of accuracy or the number of iterations