Stochastic Intermediate Gradient Method for Convex Problems with Inexact Stochastic Oracle

In this paper we introduce new methods for convex optimization problems with inexact stochastic oracle. First method is an extension of the intermediate gradient method proposed by Devolder, Glineur and Nesterov for problems with inexact oracle. Our new method can be applied to the problems with composite structure, stochastic inexact oracle and allows using non-Euclidean setup. We prove estimates for mean rate of convergence and probabilities of large deviations from this rate. Also we introduce two modifications of this method for strongly convex problems. For the first modification we prove mean rate of convergence estimates and for the second we prove estimates for large deviations from the mean rate of convergence. All the rates give the complexity estimates for proposed methods which up to multiplicative constant coincide with lower complexity bound for the considered class of convex composite optimization problems with stochastic inexact oracle

An Accelerated Method For Decentralized Distributed Stochastic Optimization Over Time-Varying Graphs

We consider a distributed stochastic optimization problem that is solved by a decentralized network of agents with only local communication between neighboring agents. The goal of the whole system is to minimize a global objective function given as a sum of local objectives held by each agent. Each local objective is defined as an expectation of a convex smooth random function and the agent is allowed to sample stochastic gradients for this function. For this setting we propose the first accelerated (in the sense of Nesterov's acceleration) method that simultaneously attains optimal up to a logarithmic factor communication and oracle complexity bounds for smooth strongly convex distributed stochastic optimization. We also consider the case when the communication graph is allowed to vary with time and obtain complexity bounds for our algorithm, which are the first upper complexity bounds for this setting in the literature