697 research outputs found
Inexact subgradient methods for quasi-convex optimization problems
2014-2015 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journa
Zero-Convex Functions, Perturbation Resilience, and Subgradient Projections for Feasibility-Seeking Methods
The convex feasibility problem (CFP) is at the core of the modeling of many
problems in various areas of science. Subgradient projection methods are
important tools for solving the CFP because they enable the use of subgradient
calculations instead of orthogonal projections onto the individual sets of the
problem. Working in a real Hilbert space, we show that the sequential
subgradient projection method is perturbation resilient. By this we mean that
under appropriate conditions the sequence generated by the method converges
weakly, and sometimes also strongly, to a point in the intersection of the
given subsets of the feasibility problem, despite certain perturbations which
are allowed in each iterative step. Unlike previous works on solving the convex
feasibility problem, the involved functions, which induce the feasibility
problem's subsets, need not be convex. Instead, we allow them to belong to a
wider and richer class of functions satisfying a weaker condition, that we call
"zero-convexity". This class, which is introduced and discussed here, holds a
promise to solve optimization problems in various areas, especially in
non-smooth and non-convex optimization. The relevance of this study to
approximate minimization and to the recent superiorization methodology for
constrained optimization is explained.Comment: Mathematical Programming Series A, accepted for publicatio
A Family of Subgradient-Based Methods for Convex Optimization Problems in a Unifying Framework
We propose a new family of subgradient- and gradient-based methods which
converges with optimal complexity for convex optimization problems whose
feasible region is simple enough. This includes cases where the objective
function is non-smooth, smooth, have composite/saddle structure, or are given
by an inexact oracle model. We unified the way of constructing the subproblems
which are necessary to be solved at each iteration of these methods. This
permitted us to analyze the convergence of these methods in a unified way
compared to previous results which required different approaches for each
method/algorithm. Our contribution rely on two well-known methods in non-smooth
convex optimization: the mirror-descent method by Nemirovski-Yudin and the
dual-averaging method by Nesterov. Therefore, our family of methods includes
them and many other methods as particular cases. For instance, the proposed
family of classical gradient methods and its accelerations generalize Devolder
et al.'s, Nesterov's primal/dual gradient methods, and Tseng's accelerated
proximal gradient methods. Also our family of methods can partially become
special cases of other universal methods, too. As an additional contribution,
the novel extended mirror-descent method removes the compactness assumption of
the feasible region and the fixation of the total number of iterations which is
required by the original mirror-descent method in order to attain the optimal
complexity.Comment: 31 pages. v3: Major revision. Research Report B-477, Department of
Mathematical and Computing Sciences, Tokyo Institute of Technology, February
201
An Inexact Successive Quadratic Approximation Method for Convex L-1 Regularized Optimization
We study a Newton-like method for the minimization of an objective function
that is the sum of a smooth convex function and an l-1 regularization term.
This method, which is sometimes referred to in the literature as a proximal
Newton method, computes a step by minimizing a piecewise quadratic model of the
objective function. In order to make this approach efficient in practice, it is
imperative to perform this inner minimization inexactly. In this paper, we give
inexactness conditions that guarantee global convergence and that can be used
to control the local rate of convergence of the iteration. Our inexactness
conditions are based on a semi-smooth function that represents a (continuous)
measure of the optimality conditions of the problem, and that embodies the
soft-thresholding iteration. We give careful consideration to the algorithm
employed for the inner minimization, and report numerical results on two test
sets originating in machine learning
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