3,993 research outputs found
Convex optimization over intersection of simple sets: improved convergence rate guarantees via an exact penalty approach
We consider the problem of minimizing a convex function over the intersection
of finitely many simple sets which are easy to project onto. This is an
important problem arising in various domains such as machine learning. The main
difficulty lies in finding the projection of a point in the intersection of
many sets. Existing approaches yield an infeasible point with an
iteration-complexity of for nonsmooth problems with no
guarantees on the in-feasibility. By reformulating the problem through exact
penalty functions, we derive first-order algorithms which not only guarantees
that the distance to the intersection is small but also improve the complexity
to and for smooth functions. For
composite and smooth problems, this is achieved through a saddle-point
reformulation where the proximal operators required by the primal-dual
algorithms can be computed in closed form. We illustrate the benefits of our
approach on a graph transduction problem and on graph matching
Moment-Matching Polynomials
We give a new framework for proving the existence of low-degree, polynomial
approximators for Boolean functions with respect to broad classes of
non-product distributions. Our proofs use techniques related to the classical
moment problem and deviate significantly from known Fourier-based methods,
which require the underlying distribution to have some product structure.
Our main application is the first polynomial-time algorithm for agnostically
learning any function of a constant number of halfspaces with respect to any
log-concave distribution (for any constant accuracy parameter). This result was
not known even for the case of learning the intersection of two halfspaces
without noise. Additionally, we show that in the "smoothed-analysis" setting,
the above results hold with respect to distributions that have sub-exponential
tails, a property satisfied by many natural and well-studied distributions in
machine learning.
Given that our algorithms can be implemented using Support Vector Machines
(SVMs) with a polynomial kernel, these results give a rigorous theoretical
explanation as to why many kernel methods work so well in practice
Existence, regularity and structure of confined elasticae
We consider the problem of minimizing the bending or elastic energy among
Jordan curves confined in a given open set . We prove existence,
regularity and some structural properties of minimizers. In particular, when
is convex we show that a minimizer is necessarily a convex curve. We
also provide an example of a minimizer with self-intersections
Stability and Error Analysis for Optimization and Generalized Equations
Stability and error analysis remain challenging for problems that lack
regularity properties near solutions, are subject to large perturbations, and
might be infinite dimensional. We consider nonconvex optimization and
generalized equations defined on metric spaces and develop bounds on solution
errors using the truncated Hausdorff distance applied to graphs and epigraphs
of the underlying set-valued mappings and functions. In the process, we extend
the calculus of such distances to cover compositions and other constructions
that arise in nonconvex problems. The results are applied to constrained
problems with feasible sets that might have empty interiors, solution of KKT
systems, and optimality conditions for difference-of-convex functions and
composite functions
Scalable Algorithms for Tractable Schatten Quasi-Norm Minimization
The Schatten-p quasi-norm is usually used to replace the standard
nuclear norm in order to approximate the rank function more accurately.
However, existing Schatten-p quasi-norm minimization algorithms involve
singular value decomposition (SVD) or eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) in each
iteration, and thus may become very slow and impractical for large-scale
problems. In this paper, we first define two tractable Schatten quasi-norms,
i.e., the Frobenius/nuclear hybrid and bi-nuclear quasi-norms, and then prove
that they are in essence the Schatten-2/3 and 1/2 quasi-norms, respectively,
which lead to the design of very efficient algorithms that only need to update
two much smaller factor matrices. We also design two efficient proximal
alternating linearized minimization algorithms for solving representative
matrix completion problems. Finally, we provide the global convergence and
performance guarantees for our algorithms, which have better convergence
properties than existing algorithms. Experimental results on synthetic and
real-world data show that our algorithms are more accurate than the
state-of-the-art methods, and are orders of magnitude faster.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, Appears in Proceedings of the 30th AAAI
Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Phoenix, Arizona, USA, pp.
2016--2022, 201
Partial separability revisited: Necessary and sufficient criteria
We extend the classification of mixed states of quantum systems composed of
arbitrary number of subsystems of arbitrary dimensions. This extended
classification is complete in the sense of partial separability and gives
1+18+1 partial separability classes in the tripartite case contrary to a former
1+8+1. Then we give necessary and sufficient criteria for these classes, which
make it possible to determine to which class a mixed state belongs. These
criteria are given by convex roof extensions of functions defined on pure
states. In the special case of three-qubit systems, we define a different set
of such functions with the help of the Freudenthal triple system approach of
three-qubit entanglement.Comment: v3: 22 pages, 5 tables, 1 figure, minor corrections (typos),
clarification in the Introduction. Accepted in Phys. Rev. A. Comments are
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