760 research outputs found
Distributed Nash Equilibrium Seeking with Limited Cost Function Knowledge via A Consensus-Based Gradient-Free Method
This paper considers a distributed Nash equilibrium seeking problem, where
the players only have partial access to other players' actions, such as their
neighbors' actions. Thus, the players are supposed to communicate with each
other to estimate other players' actions. To solve the problem, a
leader-following consensus gradient-free distributed Nash equilibrium seeking
algorithm is proposed. This algorithm utilizes only the measurements of the
player's local cost function without the knowledge of its explicit expression
or the requirement on its smoothness. Hence, the algorithm is gradient-free
during the entire updating process. Moreover, the analysis on the convergence
of the Nash equilibrium is studied for the algorithm with both diminishing and
constant step-sizes, respectively. Specifically, in the case of diminishing
step-size, it is shown that the players' actions converge to the Nash
equilibrium almost surely, while in the case of fixed step-size, the
convergence to the neighborhood of the Nash equilibrium is achieved. The
performance of the proposed algorithm is verified through numerical
simulations
From Weak Learning to Strong Learning in Fictitious Play Type Algorithms
The paper studies the highly prototypical Fictitious Play (FP) algorithm, as
well as a broad class of learning processes based on best-response dynamics,
that we refer to as FP-type algorithms. A well-known shortcoming of FP is that,
while players may learn an equilibrium strategy in some abstract sense, there
are no guarantees that the period-by-period strategies generated by the
algorithm actually converge to equilibrium themselves. This issue is
fundamentally related to the discontinuous nature of the best response
correspondence and is inherited by many FP-type algorithms. Not only does it
cause problems in the interpretation of such algorithms as a mechanism for
economic and social learning, but it also greatly diminishes the practical
value of these algorithms for use in distributed control. We refer to forms of
learning in which players learn equilibria in some abstract sense only (to be
defined more precisely in the paper) as weak learning, and we refer to forms of
learning where players' period-by-period strategies converge to equilibrium as
strong learning. An approach is presented for modifying an FP-type algorithm
that achieves weak learning in order to construct a variant that achieves
strong learning. Theoretical convergence results are proved.Comment: 22 page
International Conference on Continuous Optimization (ICCOPT) 2019 Conference Book
The Sixth International Conference on Continuous Optimization took place on the campus of the Technical University of Berlin, August 3-8, 2019. The ICCOPT is a flagship conference of the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS), organized every three years. ICCOPT 2019 was hosted by the Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics (WIAS) Berlin. It included a Summer School and a Conference with a series of plenary and semi-plenary talks, organized and contributed sessions, and poster sessions.
This book comprises the full conference program. It contains, in particular, the scientific program in survey style as well as with all details, and information on the social program, the venue, special meetings, and more
A survey of random processes with reinforcement
The models surveyed include generalized P\'{o}lya urns, reinforced random
walks, interacting urn models, and continuous reinforced processes. Emphasis is
on methods and results, with sketches provided of some proofs. Applications are
discussed in statistics, biology, economics and a number of other areas.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-PS094 in the Probability
Surveys (http://www.i-journals.org/ps/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Dynamics of Social Networks: Multi-agent Information Fusion, Anticipatory Decision Making and Polling
This paper surveys mathematical models, structural results and algorithms in
controlled sensing with social learning in social networks.
Part 1, namely Bayesian Social Learning with Controlled Sensing addresses the
following questions: How does risk averse behavior in social learning affect
quickest change detection? How can information fusion be priced? How is the
convergence rate of state estimation affected by social learning? The aim is to
develop and extend structural results in stochastic control and Bayesian
estimation to answer these questions. Such structural results yield fundamental
bounds on the optimal performance, give insight into what parameters affect the
optimal policies, and yield computationally efficient algorithms.
Part 2, namely, Multi-agent Information Fusion with Behavioral Economics
Constraints generalizes Part 1. The agents exhibit sophisticated decision
making in a behavioral economics sense; namely the agents make anticipatory
decisions (thus the decision strategies are time inconsistent and interpreted
as subgame Bayesian Nash equilibria).
Part 3, namely {\em Interactive Sensing in Large Networks}, addresses the
following questions: How to track the degree distribution of an infinite random
graph with dynamics (via a stochastic approximation on a Hilbert space)? How
can the infected degree distribution of a Markov modulated power law network
and its mean field dynamics be tracked via Bayesian filtering given incomplete
information obtained by sampling the network? We also briefly discuss how the
glass ceiling effect emerges in social networks.
Part 4, namely \emph{Efficient Network Polling} deals with polling in large
scale social networks. In such networks, only a fraction of nodes can be polled
to determine their decisions. Which nodes should be polled to achieve a
statistically accurate estimates
The limits of min-max optimization algorithms: Convergence to spurious non-crticial sets
Compared to minimization problems, the min-max landscape in machine learning applications is considerably more convoluted because of the existence of cycles and similar phenomena. Such oscillatory behaviors are well-understood in the convexconcave regime, and many algorithms are known to overcome them. In this paper, we go beyond the convex-concave setting and we characterize the convergence properties of a wide class of zeroth-, first-, and (scalable) second-order methods in non-convex/nonconcave problems. In particular, we show that these state-of-the-art min-max optimization algorithms may converge with arbitrarily high probability to attractors that are in no way min-max optimal or even stationary. Spurious convergence phenomena of this type can arise even in two-dimensional problems, a fact which corroborates the empirical evidence surrounding the formidable difficulty of training GANs
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