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Alexander Gasnikov

Alexander Gasnikov contributes to research discovery and scholarly infrastructure.

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Published work

57 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

Gradient-Free Approaches is a Key to an Efficient Interaction with Markovian Stochasticity

This paper deals with stochastic optimization problems involving Markovian noise with a zero-order oracle. We present and analyze a novel derivative-free method for solving such problems in strongly convex smooth and non-smooth settings with both one-point and two-point feedback oracles. Using a randomized batching scheme, we show that when mixing time $τ$ of the underlying noise sequence is less than the dimension of the problem $d$, the convergence estimates of our method do not depend on $τ$. This observation provides an efficient way to interact with Markovian stochasticity: instead of invoking the expensive first-order oracle, one should use the zero-order oracle. Finally, we complement our upper bounds with the corresponding lower bounds. This confirms the optimality of our results.

preprint2026arXiv

SDG-MoE: Signed Debate Graph Mixture-of-Experts

Sparse MoE models achieve a good balance between capacity and compute by routing each token to a small subset of experts. However, in most MoE architectures, once a token is routed, the selected experts process it independently and their outputs are combined via a weighted sum. This leaves open whether enabling communication among them could improve performance. While prior work has raised this question, direct interaction among the active routed experts remains underexplored. In this paper, we propose SDG-MoE (Signed Debate Graph Mixture-of-Experts), a novel architecture that adds a lightweight, iterative deliberation step before final aggregation. SDG-MoE introduces three components: (i) two learned interaction matrices over the active experts, a support graph $A^+$ and a critique graph $A^-$, capturing reinforcing and corrective influences; (ii) a signed message-passing step that updates expert representations before aggregation; and (iii) a disagreement-gated Friedkin-Johnsen-style anchoring that controls deliberation strength while preventing expert drift. Together, these enable a structured deliberation process where interaction strength scales with disagreement and specialization is preserved. We also provide a theoretical analysis establishing stability conditions on expert states and showing that deliberation adds only low-order overhead over the active set. In controlled three-seed pretraining experiments, SDG-MoE improves validation perplexity over both an unsigned graph communication baseline and vanilla MoE, outperforming the strongest baseline by 19.8%, and gives the best external perplexity on WikiText-103, C4, and Paloma among the compared systems.

preprint2026arXiv

UCB-type Algorithm for Budget-Constrained Expert Learning

In many modern applications, a system must dynamically choose between several adaptive learning algorithms that are trained online. Examples include model selection in streaming environments, switching between trading strategies in finance, and orchestrating multiple contextual bandit or reinforcement learning agents. At each round, a learner must select one predictor among $K$ adaptive experts to make a prediction, while being able to update at most $M \le K$ of them under a fixed training budget. We address this problem in the \emph{stochastic setting} and introduce \algname{M-LCB}, a computationally efficient UCB-style meta-algorithm that provides \emph{anytime regret guarantees}. Its confidence intervals are built directly from realized losses, require no additional optimization, and seamlessly reflect the convergence properties of the underlying experts. If each expert achieves internal regret $\tilde O(T^α)$, then \algname{M-LCB} ensures overall regret bounded by $\tilde O\!\Bigl(\sqrt{\tfrac{KT}{M}} \;+\; (K/M)^{1-α}\,T^α\Bigr)$. To our knowledge, this is the first result establishing regret guarantees when multiple adaptive experts are trained simultaneously under per-round budget constraints. We illustrate the framework with two representative cases: (i) parametric models trained online with stochastic losses, and (ii) experts that are themselves multi-armed bandit algorithms. These examples highlight how \algname{M-LCB} extends the classical bandit paradigm to the more realistic scenario of coordinating stateful, self-learning experts under limited resources.

preprint2023arXiv

Accelerated gradient methods with absolute and relative noise in the gradient

In this paper, we investigate accelerated first-order methods for smooth convex optimization problems under inexact information on the gradient of the objective. The noise in the gradient is considered to be additive with two possibilities: absolute noise bounded by a constant, and relative noise proportional to the norm of the gradient. We investigate the accumulation of the errors in the convex and strongly convex settings with the main difference with most of the previous works being that the feasible set can be unbounded. The key to the latter is to prove a bound on the trajectory of the algorithm. We also give a stopping criterion for the algorithm and consider extensions to the cases of stochastic optimization and composite nonsmooth problems.

preprint2023arXiv

Decentralized Strongly-Convex Optimization with Affine Constraints: Primal and Dual Approaches

Decentralized optimization is a common paradigm used in distributed signal processing and sensing as well as privacy-preserving and large-scale machine learning. It is assumed that several computational entities locally hold objective functions and are connected by a network. The agents aim to commonly minimize the sum of the local objectives subject by making gradient updates and exchanging information with their immediate neighbors. Theory of decentralized optimization is pretty well-developed in the literature. In particular, it includes lower bounds and optimal algorithms. In this paper, we assume that along with an objective, each node also holds affine constraints. We discuss several primal and dual approaches to decentralized optimization problem with affine constraints.

preprint2023arXiv

The Mirror-Prox Sliding Method for Non-smooth decentralized saddle-point problems

The saddle-point optimization problems have a lot of practical applications. This paper focuses on such non-smooth problems in decentralized case. This work contains generalization of recently proposed sliding for centralized problem. Through specific penalization method and this sliding we obtain algorithm for non-smooth decentralized saddle-point problems. Note, the proposed method approaches lower bounds both for number of communication rounds and calls of (sub-)gradient per node.

preprint2022arXiv

Accelerated Primal-Dual Gradient Method for Smooth and Convex-Concave Saddle-Point Problems with Bilinear Coupling

In this paper we study the convex-concave saddle-point problem $\min_x \max_y f(x) + y^T \mathbf{A} x - g(y)$, where $f(x)$ and $g(y)$ are smooth and convex functions. We propose an Accelerated Primal-Dual Gradient Method (APDG) for solving this problem, achieving (i) an optimal linear convergence rate in the strongly-convex-strongly-concave regime, matching the lower complexity bound (Zhang et al., 2021), and (ii) an accelerated linear convergence rate in the case when only one of the functions $f(x)$ and $g(y)$ is strongly convex or even none of them are. Finally, we obtain a linearly convergent algorithm for the general smooth and convex-concave saddle point problem $\min_x \max_y F(x,y)$ without the requirement of strong convexity or strong concavity.

preprint2022arXiv

Acceleration in Distributed Optimization under Similarity

We study distributed (strongly convex) optimization problems over a network of agents, with no centralized nodes. The loss functions of the agents are assumed to be \textit{similar}, due to statistical data similarity or otherwise. In order to reduce the number of communications to reach a solution accuracy, we proposed a {\it preconditioned, accelerated} distributed method. An $\varepsilon$-solution is achieved in $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}\big(\sqrt{\frac{β/μ}{1-ρ}}\log1/\varepsilon\big)$ number of communications steps, where $β/μ$ is the relative condition number between the global and local loss functions, and $ρ$ characterizes the connectivity of the network. This rate matches (up to poly-log factors) lower complexity communication bounds of distributed gossip-algorithms applied to the class of problems of interest. Numerical results show significant communication savings with respect to existing accelerated distributed schemes, especially when solving ill-conditioned problems.

preprint2022arXiv

An Approach for Non-Convex Uniformly Concave Structured Saddle Point Problem

Recently, saddle point problems have received much attention due to their powerful modeling capability for a lot of problems from diverse domains. Applications of these problems occur in many applied areas, such as robust optimization, distributed optimization, game theory, and many applications in machine learning such as empirical risk minimization and generative adversarial networks training. Therefore, many researchers have actively worked on developing numerical methods for solving saddle point problems in many different settings. This paper is devoted to developing a numerical method for solving saddle point problems in the non-convex uniformly-concave setting. We study a general class of saddle point problems with composite structure and Hölder-continuous higher-order derivatives. To solve the problem under consideration, we propose an approach in which we reduce the problem to a combination of two auxiliary optimization problems separately for each group of variables, outer minimization problem w.r.t. primal variables, and inner maximization problem w.r.t the dual variables. For solving the outer minimization problem, we use the \textit{Adaptive Gradient Method}, which is applicable for non-convex problems and also works with an inexact oracle that is generated by approximately solving the inner problem. For solving the inner maximization problem, we use the \textit{Restarted Unified Acceleration Framework}, which is a framework that unifies the high-order acceleration methods for minimizing a convex function that has Hölder-continuous higher-order derivatives. Separate complexity bounds are provided for the number of calls to the first-order oracles for the outer minimization problem and higher-order oracles for the inner maximization problem. Moreover, the complexity of the whole proposed approach is then estimated.

preprint2022arXiv

Decentralized convex optimization under affine constraints for power systems control

Modern power systems are now in continuous process of massive changes. Increased penetration of distributed generation, usage of energy storage and controllable demand require introduction of a new control paradigm that does not rely on massive information exchange required by centralized approaches. Distributed algorithms can rely only on limited information from neighbours to obtain an optimal solution for various optimization problems, such as optimal power flow, unit commitment etc. As a generalization of these problems we consider the problem of decentralized minimization of the smooth and convex partially separable function $f = \sum_{k=1}^l f^k(x^k,\tilde x)$ under the coupled $\sum_{k=1}^l (A^k x^k - b^k) \leq 0$ and the shared $\tilde{A} \tilde{x} - \tilde{b} \leq 0$ affine constraints, where the information about $A^k$ and $b^k$ is only available for the $k$-th node of the computational network. One way to handle the coupled constraints in a distributed manner is to rewrite them in a distributed-friendly form using the Laplace matrix of the communication graph and auxiliary variables (Khamisov, CDC, 2017). Instead of using this method we reformulate the constrained optimization problem as a saddle point problem (SPP) and utilize the consensus constraint technique to make it distributed-friendly. Then we provide a complexity analysis for state-of-the-art SPP solving algorithms applied to this SPP.

preprint2022arXiv

Distributed Saddle-Point Problems Under Similarity

We study solution methods for (strongly-)convex-(strongly)-concave Saddle-Point Problems (SPPs) over networks of two type - master/workers (thus centralized) architectures and meshed (thus decentralized) networks. The local functions at each node are assumed to be similar, due to statistical data similarity or otherwise. We establish lower complexity bounds for a fairly general class of algorithms solving the SPP. We show that a given suboptimality $ε>0$ is achieved over master/workers networks in $Ω\big(Δ\cdot δ/μ\cdot \log (1/\varepsilon)\big)$ rounds of communications, where $δ>0$ measures the degree of similarity of the local functions, $μ$ is their strong convexity constant, and $Δ$ is the diameter of the network. The lower communication complexity bound over meshed networks reads $Ω\big(1/{\sqrtρ} \cdot δ/μ\cdot\log (1/\varepsilon)\big)$, where $ρ$ is the (normalized) eigengap of the gossip matrix used for the communication between neighbouring nodes. We then propose algorithms matching the lower bounds over either types of networks (up to log-factors). We assess the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms on a robust logistic regression problem.

preprint2022arXiv

FLECS: A Federated Learning Second-Order Framework via Compression and Sketching

Inspired by the recent work FedNL (Safaryan et al, FedNL: Making Newton-Type Methods Applicable to Federated Learning), we propose a new communication efficient second-order framework for Federated learning, namely FLECS. The proposed method reduces the high-memory requirements of FedNL by the usage of an L-SR1 type update for the Hessian approximation which is stored on the central server. A low dimensional `sketch' of the Hessian is all that is needed by each device to generate an update, so that memory costs as well as number of Hessian-vector products for the agent are low. Biased and unbiased compressions are utilized to make communication costs also low. Convergence guarantees for FLECS are provided in both the strongly convex, and nonconvex cases, and local linear convergence is also established under strong convexity. Numerical experiments confirm the practical benefits of this new FLECS algorithm.

preprint2022arXiv

Generalized Mirror Prox for Monotone Variational Inequalities: Universality and Inexact Oracle

We introduce an inexact oracle model for variational inequalities (VI) with monotone operator, propose a numerical method which solves such VI's and analyze its convergence rate. As a particular case, we consider VI's with Hölder-continuous operator and show that our algorithm is universal. This means that without knowing the Hölder parameter $ν$ and Hölder constant $L_ν$ it has the best possible complexity for this class of VI's, namely our algorithm has complexity $O\left( \inf_{ν\in[0,1]}\left(\frac{L_ν}{\varepsilon} \right)^{\frac{2}{1+ν}}R^2 \right)$, where $R$ is the size of the feasible set and $\varepsilon$ is the desired accuracy of the solution. We also consider the case of VI's with strongly monotone operator and generalize our method for VI's with inexact oracle and our universal method for this class of problems. Finally, we show, how our method can be applied to convex-concave saddle point problems with Hölder-continuous partial subgradients.

preprint2022arXiv

Gradient-Free Methods for Saddle-Point Problem

In the paper, we generalize the approach Gasnikov et. al, 2017, which allows to solve (stochastic) convex optimization problems with an inexact gradient-free oracle, to the convex-concave saddle-point problem. The proposed approach works, at least, like the best existing approaches. But for a special set-up (simplex type constraints and closeness of Lipschitz constants in 1 and 2 norms) our approach reduces $\frac{n}{\log n}$ times the required number of oracle calls (function calculations). Our method uses a stochastic approximation of the gradient via finite differences. In this case, the function must be specified not only on the optimization set itself, but in a certain neighbourhood of it. In the second part of the paper, we analyze the case when such an assumption cannot be made, we propose a general approach on how to modernize the method to solve this problem, and also we apply this approach to particular cases of some classical sets.

preprint2022arXiv

On the relations of stochastic convex optimization problems with empirical risk minimization problems on $p$-norm balls

In this paper, we consider convex stochastic optimization problems arising in machine learning applications (e.g., risk minimization) and mathematical statistics (e.g., maximum likelihood estimation). There are two main approaches to solve such kinds of problems, namely the Stochastic Approximation approach (online approach) and the Sample Average Approximation approach, also known as the Monte Carlo approach, (offline approach). In the offline approach, the problem is replaced by its empirical counterpart (the empirical risk minimization problem). The natural question is how to define the problem sample size, i.e., how many realizations should be sampled so that the quite accurate solution of the empirical problem be the solution of the original problem with the desired precision. This issue is one of the main issues in modern machine learning and optimization. In the last decade, a lot of significant advances were made in these areas to solve convex stochastic optimization problems on the Euclidean balls (or the whole space). In this work, we are based on these advances and study the case of arbitrary balls in the $\ell_p$-norms. We also explore the question of how the parameter $p$ affects the estimates of the required number of terms as a function of empirical risk.

preprint2022arXiv

Optimal Gradient Sliding and its Application to Distributed Optimization Under Similarity

We study structured convex optimization problems, with additive objective $r:=p + q$, where $r$ is ($μ$-strongly) convex, $q$ is $L_q$-smooth and convex, and $p$ is $L_p$-smooth, possibly nonconvex. For such a class of problems, we proposed an inexact accelerated gradient sliding method that can skip the gradient computation for one of these components while still achieving optimal complexity of gradient calls of $p$ and $q$, that is, $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{L_p/μ})$ and $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{L_q/μ})$, respectively. This result is much sharper than the classic black-box complexity $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{(L_p+L_q)/μ})$, especially when the difference between $L_q$ and $L_q$ is large. We then apply the proposed method to solve distributed optimization problems over master-worker architectures, under agents' function similarity, due to statistical data similarity or otherwise. The distributed algorithm achieves for the first time lower complexity bounds on {\it both} communication and local gradient calls, with the former having being a long-standing open problem. Finally the method is extended to distributed saddle-problems (under function similarity) by means of solving a class of variational inequalities, achieving lower communication and computation complexity bounds.

preprint2022arXiv

Oracle Complexity Separation in Convex Optimization

Many convex optimization problems have structured objective function written as a sum of functions with different types of oracles (full gradient, coordinate derivative, stochastic gradient) and different evaluation complexity of these oracles. In the strongly convex case these functions also have different condition numbers, which eventually define the iteration complexity of first-order methods and the number of oracle calls required to achieve given accuracy. Motivated by the desire to call more expensive oracle less number of times, in this paper we consider minimization of a sum of two functions and propose a generic algorithmic framework to separate oracle complexities for each component in the sum. As a specific example, for the $μ$-strongly convex problem $\min_{x\in \mathbb{R}^n} h(x) + g(x)$ with $L_h$-smooth function $h$ and $L_g$-smooth function $g$, a special case of our algorithm requires, up to a logarithmic factor, $O(\sqrt{L_h/μ})$ first-order oracle calls for $h$ and $O(\sqrt{L_g/μ})$ first-order oracle calls for $g$. Our general framework covers also the setting of strongly convex objectives, the setting when $g$ is given by coordinate derivative oracle, and the setting when $g$ has a finite-sum structure and is available through stochastic gradient oracle. In the latter two cases we obtain respectively accelerated random coordinate descent and accelerated variance reduction methods with oracle complexity separation.

preprint2022arXiv

Primal-Dual Stochastic Mirror Descent for MDPs

We consider the problem of learning the optimal policy for infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs). For this purpose, some variant of Stochastic Mirror Descent is proposed for convex programming problems with Lipschitz-continuous functionals. An important detail is the ability to use inexact values of functional constraints and compute the value of dual variables. We analyze this algorithm in a general case and obtain an estimate of the convergence rate that does not accumulate errors during the operation of the method. Using this algorithm, we get the first parallel algorithm for mixing average-reward MDPs with a generative model without reduction to discounted MDP. One of the main features of the presented method is low communication costs in a distributed centralized setting, even with very large networks.

preprint2022arXiv

The First Optimal Acceleration of High-Order Methods in Smooth Convex Optimization

In this paper, we study the fundamental open question of finding the optimal high-order algorithm for solving smooth convex minimization problems. Arjevani et al. (2019) established the lower bound $Ω\left(ε^{-2/(3p+1)}\right)$ on the number of the $p$-th order oracle calls required by an algorithm to find an $ε$-accurate solution to the problem, where the $p$-th order oracle stands for the computation of the objective function value and the derivatives up to the order $p$. However, the existing state-of-the-art high-order methods of Gasnikov et al. (2019b); Bubeck et al. (2019); Jiang et al. (2019) achieve the oracle complexity $\mathcal{O}\left(ε^{-2/(3p+1)} \log (1/ε)\right)$, which does not match the lower bound. The reason for this is that these algorithms require performing a complex binary search procedure, which makes them neither optimal nor practical. We fix this fundamental issue by providing the first algorithm with $\mathcal{O}\left(ε^{-2/(3p+1)}\right)$ $p$-th order oracle complexity.

preprint2022arXiv

The First Optimal Algorithm for Smooth and Strongly-Convex-Strongly-Concave Minimax Optimization

In this paper, we revisit the smooth and strongly-convex-strongly-concave minimax optimization problem. Zhang et al. (2021) and Ibrahim et al. (2020) established the lower bound $Ω\left(\sqrt{κ_xκ_y} \log \frac{1}ε\right)$ on the number of gradient evaluations required to find an $ε$-accurate solution, where $κ_x$ and $κ_y$ are condition numbers for the strong convexity and strong concavity assumptions. However, the existing state-of-the-art methods do not match this lower bound: algorithms of Lin et al. (2020) and Wang and Li (2020) have gradient evaluation complexity $\mathcal{O}\left( \sqrt{κ_xκ_y}\log^3\frac{1}ε\right)$ and $\mathcal{O}\left( \sqrt{κ_xκ_y}\log^3 (κ_xκ_y)\log\frac{1}ε\right)$, respectively. We fix this fundamental issue by providing the first algorithm with $\mathcal{O}\left(\sqrt{κ_xκ_y}\log\frac{1}ε\right)$ gradient evaluation complexity. We design our algorithm in three steps: (i) we reformulate the original problem as a minimization problem via the pointwise conjugate function; (ii) we apply a specific variant of the proximal point algorithm to the reformulated problem; (iii) we compute the proximal operator inexactly using the optimal algorithm for operator norm reduction in monotone inclusions.

preprint2022arXiv

Vaidya's method for convex stochastic optimization in small dimension

This paper considers a general problem of convex stochastic optimization in a relatively low-dimensional space (e.g., 100 variables). It is known that for deterministic convex optimization problems of small dimensions, the fastest convergence is achieved by the center of gravity type methods (e.g., Vaidya's cutting plane method). For stochastic optimization problems, the question of whether Vaidya's method can be used comes down to the question of how it accumulates inaccuracy in the subgradient. The recent result of the authors states that the errors do not accumulate on iterations of Vaidya's method, which allows proposing its analog for stochastic optimization problems. The primary technique is to replace the subgradient in Vaidya's method with its probabilistic counterpart (the arithmetic mean of the stochastic subgradients). The present paper implements the described plan, which ultimately leads to an effective (if parallel computations for batching are possible) method for solving convex stochastic optimization problems in relatively low-dimensional spaces.

preprint2021arXiv

Adaptive Catalyst for Smooth Convex Optimization

In this paper, we present a generic framework that allows accelerating almost arbitrary non-accelerated deterministic and randomized algorithms for smooth convex optimization problems. The main approach of our envelope is the same as in Catalyst (Lin et al., 2015): an accelerated proximal outer gradient method, which is used as an envelope for a non-accelerated inner method for the $\ell_2$ regularized auxiliary problem. Our algorithm has two key differences: 1) easily verifiable stopping criteria for inner algorithm; 2) the regularization parameter can be tunned along the way. As a result, the main contribution of our work is a new framework that applies to adaptive inner algorithms: Steepest Descent, Adaptive Coordinate Descent, Alternating Minimization. Moreover, in the non-adaptive case, our approach allows obtaining Catalyst without a logarithmic factor, which appears in the standard Catalyst (Lin et al., 2015, 2018).

preprint2021arXiv

ADOM: Accelerated Decentralized Optimization Method for Time-Varying Networks

We propose ADOM - an accelerated method for smooth and strongly convex decentralized optimization over time-varying networks. ADOM uses a dual oracle, i.e., we assume access to the gradient of the Fenchel conjugate of the individual loss functions. Up to a constant factor, which depends on the network structure only, its communication complexity is the same as that of accelerated Nesterov gradient method (Nesterov, 2003). To the best of our knowledge, only the algorithm of Rogozin et al. (2019) has a convergence rate with similar properties. However, their algorithm converges under the very restrictive assumption that the number of network changes can not be greater than a tiny percentage of the number of iterations. This assumption is hard to satisfy in practice, as the network topology changes usually can not be controlled. In contrast, ADOM merely requires the network to stay connected throughout time.

preprint2021arXiv

Decentralized and Parallel Primal and Dual Accelerated Methods for Stochastic Convex Programming Problems

We introduce primal and dual stochastic gradient oracle methods for decentralized convex optimization problems. Both for primal and dual oracles, the proposed methods are optimal in terms of the number of communication steps. However, for all classes of the objective, the optimality in terms of the number of oracle calls per node takes place only up to a logarithmic factor and the notion of smoothness. By using mini-batching technique, we show that the proposed methods with stochastic oracle can be additionally parallelized at each node. The considered algorithms can be applied to many data science problems and inverse problems.

preprint2021arXiv

Lecture Notes on Stochastic Processes

This is lecture notes on the course "Stochastic Processes". In this format, the course was taught in the spring semesters 2017 and 2018 for third-year bachelor students of the Department of Control and Applied Mathematics, School of Applied Mathematics and Informatics at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. The base of this course was formed and taught for decades by professors from the Department of Mathematical Foundations of Control A.A. Natan, S.A. Guz, and O.G. Gorbachev. Besides standard chapters of stochastic processes theory (correlation theory, Markov processes) in this book (and lectures) the following chapters are included: von Neumann-Birkhoff-Khinchin ergodic theorem, macrosystem equilibrium concept, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Markov decision processes and the secretary problem.

preprint2021arXiv

Linearly Convergent Gradient-Free Methods for Minimization of Parabolic Approximation

Finding the global minimum of non-convex functions is one of the main and most difficult problems in modern optimization. In the first part of the paper, we consider a certain class of "good" non-convex functions that can be bounded above and below by a parabolic function. We show that using only the zeroth-order oracle, one can obtain the linear speed $\log \left(\frac{1}{\varepsilon}\right)$ of finding the global minimum on a cube. The second part of the paper looks at the nonconvex problem in a slightly different way. We assume that minimizing the quadratic function, but at the same time we have access to a zeroth-order oracle with noise and this noise is proportional to the distance to the solution. Dealing with such noise assumptions for gradient-free methods is new in the literature. We show that here it is also possible to achieve the linear rate of convergence.

preprint2021arXiv

Mirror Descent for Constrained Optimization Problems with Large Subgradient Values

Based on the ideas of arXiv:1710.06612, we consider the problem of minimization of the Holder-continuous non-smooth functional $f$ with non-positive convex (generally, non-smooth) Lipschitz-continuous functional constraint. We propose some novel strategies of step-sizes and adaptive stopping rules in Mirror Descent algorithms for the considered class of problems. It is shown that the methods are applicable to the objective functionals of various levels of smoothness. Applying the restart technique to the Mirror Descent Algorithm there was proposed an optimal method to solve optimization problems with strongly convex objective functionals. Estimates of the rate of convergence of the considered algorithms are obtained depending on the level of smoothness of the objective functional. These estimates indicate the optimality of considered methods from the point of view of the theory of lower oracle bounds. In addition, the case of a quasi-convex objective functional and constraint was considered.

preprint2021arXiv

Numerical methods for the resource allocation problem in networks

In this paper, we consider the resource allocation problem in a network with a large number of connections which are used by a huge number of users. The resource allocation problem under discussion is a maximization problem with linear inequality constraints. To solve this problem we construct the dual problem and propose to use the following numerical optimization methods for the dual: a fast gradient method, a stochastic projected subgradient method, an ellipsoid method, and a random gradient extrapolation method. A special focus is made on the primal-dual analysis of these methods. For each method we estimate the convergence rate. We also provide some modifications of these methods in the setup of distributed computations, taking into account their application to networks.

preprint2021arXiv

On solving convex min-min problems with smoothness and strong convexity in one variable group and small dimension of the other

This paper is devoted to some approaches for convex min-min problems with smoothness and strong convexity in only one of the two variable groups. It is shown that the proposed approaches, based on Vaidya's cutting plane method and Nesterov's fast gradient method, achieve the linear convergence. The outer minimization problem is solved using Vaidya's cutting plane method, and the inner problem (smooth and strongly convex) is solved using the fast gradient method. Due to the importance of machine learning applications, we also consider the case when the objective function is a sum of a large number of functions. In this case, the variance-reduced accelerated gradient algorithm is used instead of Nesterov's fast gradient method. The numerical experiments' results illustrate the advantages of the proposed procedures for logistic regression with the prior on one of the parameter groups.

preprint2021arXiv

One-Point Gradient-Free Methods for Smooth and Non-Smooth Saddle-Point Problems

In this paper, we analyze gradient-free methods with one-point feedback for stochastic saddle point problems $\min_{x}\max_{y} φ(x, y)$. For non-smooth and smooth cases, we present analysis in a general geometric setup with arbitrary Bregman divergence. For problems with higher-order smoothness, the analysis is carried out only in the Euclidean case. The estimates we have obtained repeat the best currently known estimates of gradient-free methods with one-point feedback for problems of imagining a convex or strongly convex function. The paper uses three main approaches to recovering the gradient through finite differences: standard with a random direction, as well as its modifications with kernels and residual feedback. We also provide experiments to compare these approaches for the matrix game.

preprint2021arXiv

Recent theoretical advances in decentralized distributed convex optimization

In the last few years, the theory of decentralized distributed convex optimization has made significant progress. The lower bounds on communications rounds and oracle calls have appeared, as well as methods that reach both of these bounds. In this paper, we focus on how these results can be explained based on optimal algorithms for the non-distributed setup. In particular, we provide our recent results that have not been published yet and that could be found in details only in arXiv preprints.

preprint2021arXiv

Zeroth-order methods for noisy Hölder-gradient functions

In this paper, we prove new complexity bounds for zeroth-order methods in non-convex optimization with inexact observations of the objective function values. We use the Gaussian smoothing approach of Nesterov and Spokoiny [2015] and extend their results, obtained for optimization methods for smooth zeroth-order non-convex problems, to the setting of minimization of functions with Hölder-continuous gradient with noisy zeroth-order oracle, obtaining noise upper-bounds as well. We consider finite-difference gradient approximation based on normally distributed random Gaussian vectors and prove that gradient descent scheme based on this approximation converges to the stationary point of the smoothed function. We also consider convergence to the stationary point of the original (not smoothed) function and obtain bounds on the number of steps of the algorithm for making the norm of its gradient small. Additionally, we provide bounds for the level of noise in the zeroth-order oracle for which it is still possible to guarantee that the above bounds hold. We also consider separately the case of $ν= 1$ and show that in this case the dependence of the obtained bounds on the dimension can be improved.

preprint2020arXiv

A Dual Approach for Optimal Algorithms in Distributed Optimization over Networks

We study dual-based algorithms for distributed convex optimization problems over networks, where the objective is to minimize a sum $\sum_{i=1}^{m}f_i(z)$ of functions over in a network. We provide complexity bounds for four different cases, namely: each function $f_i$ is strongly convex and smooth, each function is either strongly convex or smooth, and when it is convex but neither strongly convex nor smooth. Our approach is based on the dual of an appropriately formulated primal problem, which includes a graph that models the communication restrictions. We propose distributed algorithms that achieve the same optimal rates as their centralized counterparts (up to constant and logarithmic factors), with an additional optimal cost related to the spectral properties of the network. Initially, we focus on functions for which we can explicitly minimize its Legendre-Fenchel conjugate, i.e., admissible or dual friendly functions. Then, we study distributed optimization algorithms for non-dual friendly functions, as well as a method to improve the dependency on the parameters of the functions involved. Numerical analysis of the proposed algorithms is also provided.

preprint2020arXiv

Accelerated gradient sliding and variance reduction

We consider sum-type strongly convex optimization problem (first term) with smooth convex not proximal friendly composite (second term). We show that the complexity of this problem can be split into optimal number of incremental oracle calls for the first (sum-type) term and optimal number of oracle calls for the second (composite) term. Here under `optimal number' we mean estimate that corresponds to the well known lower bound in the absence of another term.

preprint2020arXiv

Accelerated methods for composite non-bilinear saddle point problem

Based on G. Lan's accelerated gradient sliding and general relation between the smoothness and strong convexity parameters of function under Legendre transformation we show that under rather general conditions the best known bounds for bilinear convex-concave smooth composite saddle point problem keep true for or non-bilinear convex-concave smooth composite saddle point problem. Moreover, we describe situations when the bounds differ and explain the nature of the difference.

preprint2020arXiv

Adaptive Gradient Descent for Convex and Non-Convex Stochastic Optimization

In this paper we propose several adaptive gradient methods for stochastic optimization. Unlike AdaGrad-type of methods, our algorithms are based on Armijo-type line search and they simultaneously adapt to the unknown Lipschitz constant of the gradient and variance of the stochastic approximation for the gradient. We consider an accelerated and non-accelerated gradient descent for convex problems and gradient descent for non-convex problems. In the experiments we demonstrate superiority of our methods to existing adaptive methods, e.g. AdaGrad and Adam.

preprint2020arXiv

ADMM-based Distributed State Estimation for Power Systems: Evaluation of Performance

Recently, distributed algorithms for power system state estimation have attracted significant attention. Along with such advantages as decomposition, parallelization of the original problem and absence of a central computation unit, distributed state estimation may also serve for local information privacy reasons since the only information to be transferred is the boundary states of neighboring areas. In this paper, we propose some novel approaches for speeding up the ADMM-based distributed state estimation algorithms by utilizing some recent results in optimization theory. We also thoroughly analyze the theoretical and practical performance, concluding that accelerated approach outperforms the existing ones. The theoretical considerations are verified through the experiments on a scalable example.

preprint2020arXiv

Alternating Minimization Methods for Strongly Convex Optimization

{We consider alternating minimization procedures for convex optimization problems with variable divided in many block, each block being amenable for minimization with respect to its variable with freezed other variables blocks. In the case of two blocks, we prove a linear convergence rate for alternating minimization procedure under Polyak-Lojasiewicz condition, which can be seen as a relaxation of the strong convexity assumption. Under strong convexity assumption in many-blocks setting we provide an accelerated alternating minimization procedure with linear rate depending on the square root of the condition number as opposed to condition number for the non-accelerated method. We also mention an approximating non-negative solution to a linear system of equations $Ax=y$ with alternating minimization of Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence between $Ax$ and $y$.

preprint2020arXiv

An Accelerated Directional Derivative Method for Smooth Stochastic Convex Optimization

We consider smooth stochastic convex optimization problems in the context of algorithms which are based on directional derivatives of the objective function. This context can be considered as an intermediate one between derivative-free optimization and gradient-based optimization. We assume that at any given point and for any given direction, a stochastic approximation for the directional derivative of the objective function at this point and in this direction is available with some additive noise. The noise is assumed to be of an unknown nature, but bounded in the absolute value. We underline that we consider directional derivatives in any direction, as opposed to coordinate descent methods which use only derivatives in coordinate directions. For this setting, we propose a non-accelerated and an accelerated directional derivative method and provide their complexity bounds. Our non-accelerated algorithm has a complexity bound which is similar to the gradient-based algorithm, that is, without any dimension-dependent factor. Our accelerated algorithm has a complexity bound which coincides with the complexity bound of the accelerated gradient-based algorithm up to a factor of square root of the problem dimension. We extend these results to strongly convex problems.

preprint2020arXiv

An Accelerated Method for Derivative-Free Smooth Stochastic Convex Optimization

We consider an unconstrained problem of minimizing a smooth convex function which is only available through noisy observations of its values, the noise consisting of two parts. Similar to stochastic optimization problems, the first part is of stochastic nature. The second part is additive noise of unknown nature, but bounded in absolute value. In the two-point feedback setting, i.e. when pairs of function values are available, we propose an accelerated derivative-free algorithm together with its complexity analysis. The complexity bound of our derivative-free algorithm is only by a factor of $\sqrt{n}$ larger than the bound for accelerated gradient-based algorithms, where $n$ is the dimension of the decision variable. We also propose a non-accelerated derivative-free algorithm with a complexity bound similar to the stochastic-gradient-based algorithm, that is, our bound does not have any dimension-dependent factor except logarithmic. Notably, if the difference between the starting point and the solution is a sparse vector, for both our algorithms, we obtain a better complexity bound if the algorithm uses an $1$-norm proximal setup, rather than the Euclidean proximal setup, which is a standard choice for unconstrained problems

preprint2020arXiv

Decentralize and Randomize: Faster Algorithm for Wasserstein Barycenters

We study the decentralized distributed computation of discrete approximations for the regularized Wasserstein barycenter of a finite set of continuous probability measures distributedly stored over a network. We assume there is a network of agents/machines/computers, and each agent holds a private continuous probability measure and seeks to compute the barycenter of all the measures in the network by getting samples from its local measure and exchanging information with its neighbors. Motivated by this problem, we develop, and analyze, a novel accelerated primal-dual stochastic gradient method for general stochastic convex optimization problems with linear equality constraints. Then, we apply this method to the decentralized distributed optimization setting to obtain a new algorithm for the distributed semi-discrete regularized Wasserstein barycenter problem. Moreover, we show explicit non-asymptotic complexity for the proposed algorithm.

preprint2020arXiv

Evolutionary interpretations of entropy model for correspondence matrix calculation

In the work two ways of evolutionary interpretation of entropy model for correspondence matrix calculation are proposed. Both approaches based on the stochastic chemical kinetic evolution under the detailed balance condition. The first approach is based on the binary reactions, and the second one is based on the population games theory. Both approaches allow one to understand better possible physical interpretations of the classic model and to obtain the answers for some open questions in neighborhoods branches. For example, one can propose a selection rule to the unique equilibrium among the set of equilibriums.

preprint2020arXiv

Finding equilibrium in two-stage traffic assignment model

Authors describe a two-stage traffic assignment model. It contains of two blocks. The first block consists of model for calculating correspondence (demand) matrix, whereas the second block is a traffic assignment model. The first model calculates a matrix of correspondences using a matrix of transport costs. It characterizes the required volumes of movement from one area to another. The second model describes how exactly the needs for displacement, specified by the correspondence matrix, are distributed along the possible paths. It works on the basis of the Nash--Wardrop equilibrium (each driver chooses the shortest path). Knowing the ways of distribute flows along the paths, it is possible to calculate the cost matrix. Equilibrium in a two-stage model is a fixed point in the sequence of these two models. The article proposes a method of reducing the problem of finding the equilibrium to the problem of the convex non-smooth optimization. Also a numerical method for solving the obtained optimization problem is proposed. Numerical experiments were carried out for the small towns.

preprint2020arXiv

Inexact Model: A Framework for Optimization and Variational Inequalities

In this paper we propose a general algorithmic framework for first-order methods in optimization in a broad sense, including minimization problems, saddle-point problems and variational inequalities. This framework allows to obtain many known methods as a special case, the list including accelerated gradient method, composite optimization methods, level-set methods, proximal methods. The idea of the framework is based on constructing an inexact model of the main problem component, i.e. objective function in optimization or operator in variational inequalities. Besides reproducing known results, our framework allows to construct new methods, which we illustrate by constructing a universal method for variational inequalities with composite structure. This method works for smooth and non-smooth problems with optimal complexity without a priori knowledge of the problem smoothness. We also generalize our framework for strongly convex objectives and strongly monotone variational inequalities.

preprint2020arXiv

Multimarginal Optimal Transport by Accelerated Alternating Minimization

We consider a multimarginal optimal transport, which includes as a particular case the Wasserstein barycenter problem. In this problem one has to find an optimal coupling between $m$ probability measures, which amounts to finding a tensor of the order $m$. We propose an accelerated method based on accelerated alternating minimization and estimate its complexity to find the approximate solution to the problem. We use entropic regularization with sufficiently small regularization parameter and apply accelerated alternating minimization to the dual problem. A novel primal-dual analysis is used to reconstruct the approximately optimal coupling tensor. Our algorithm exhibits a better computational complexity than the state-of-the-art methods for some regimes of the problem parameters.

preprint2020arXiv

Near-Optimal Hyperfast Second-Order Method for convex optimization and its Sliding

In this paper, we present a new Hyperfast Second-Order Method with convergence rate $O(N^{-5})$ up to a logarithmic factor for the convex function with Lipshitz the third derivative. This method based on two ideas. The first comes from the superfast second-order scheme of Yu. Nesterov (CORE Discussion Paper 2020/07, 2020). It allows implementing the third-order scheme by solving subproblem using only the second-order oracle. This method converges with rate $O(N^{-4})$. The second idea comes from the work of Kamzolov et al. (arXiv:2002.01004). It is the inexact near-optimal third-order method. In this work, we improve its convergence and merge it with the scheme of solving subproblem using only the second-order oracle. As a result, we get convergence rate $O(N^{-5})$ up to a logarithmic factor. This convergence rate is near-optimal and the best known up to this moment. Further, we investigate the situation when there is a sum of two functions and improve the sliding framework from Kamzolov et al. (arXiv:2002.01004) for the second-order methods.

preprint2020arXiv

On the Complexity of Approximating Wasserstein Barycenter

We study the complexity of approximating Wassertein barycenter of $m$ discrete measures, or histograms of size $n$ by contrasting two alternative approaches, both using entropic regularization. The first approach is based on the Iterative Bregman Projections (IBP) algorithm for which our novel analysis gives a complexity bound proportional to $\frac{mn^2}{\varepsilon^2}$ to approximate the original non-regularized barycenter. Using an alternative accelerated-gradient-descent-based approach, we obtain a complexity proportional to $\frac{mn^{2.5}}{\varepsilon} $. As a byproduct, we show that the regularization parameter in both approaches has to be proportional to $\varepsilon$, which causes instability of both algorithms when the desired accuracy is high. To overcome this issue, we propose a novel proximal-IBP algorithm, which can be seen as a proximal gradient method, which uses IBP on each iteration to make a proximal step. We also consider the question of scalability of these algorithms using approaches from distributed optimization and show that the first algorithm can be implemented in a centralized distributed setting (master/slave), while the second one is amenable to a more general decentralized distributed setting with an arbitrary network topology.

preprint2020arXiv

On the Optimal Combination of Tensor Optimization Methods

We consider the minimization problem of a sum of a number of functions having Lipshitz $p$-th order derivatives with different Lipschitz constants. In this case, to accelerate optimization, we propose a general framework allowing to obtain near-optimal oracle complexity for each function in the sum separately, meaning, in particular, that the oracle for a function with lower Lipschitz constant is called a smaller number of times. As a building block, we extend the current theory of tensor methods and show how to generalize near-optimal tensor methods to work with inexact tensor step. Further, we investigate the situation when the functions in the sum have Lipschitz derivatives of a different order. For this situation, we propose a generic way to separate the oracle complexity between the parts of the sum. Our method is not optimal, which leads to an open problem of the optimal combination of oracles of a different order.

preprint2020arXiv

Projected Gradient Method for Decentralized Optimization over Time-Varying Networks

Decentralized distributed optimization over time-varying graphs (networks) is nowadays a very popular branch of research in optimization theory and consensus theory. One of the motivations to consider such networks is an application to drone networks. However, the first theoretical results in this branch appeared only five years ago (Nedic, 2014). The first results about the possibility of geometric rates of convergence for strongly convex smooth optimization problems on such networks were obtained only two years ago (Nedic, 2017). In this paper, we improve the rate of geometric convergence in the latter paper for the considered class of problems, using an original penalty method trick and robustness of projected gradient descent.

preprint2020arXiv

Traffic assignment models. Numerical aspects

In this book we describe BMW traffic assignment model and Nesterov-dePalma model. We consider Entropy model for demand matrix. Based on this models we build multi-stage traffic assignment models. The equilibrium in such models can be found from convex-concave saddle-point problem. We show how to solve this problem by using special combination of universal gradient method and Sinkhorn's algorithm.

preprint2020arXiv

Universal gradient descent

In this book we collect many different and useful facts around gradient descent method. First of all we consider gradient descent with inexact oracle. We build a general model of optimized function that include composite optimization approach, level's methods, proximal methods etc. Then we investigate primal-dual properties of the gradient descent in general model set-up. At the end we generalize method to universal one.

preprint2019arXiv

Accelerated Directional Search with non-Euclidean prox-structure

In the paper we propose an accelerated directional search method with non-euclidian prox-structure. We consider convex unconstraint optimization problem in $\mathbb{R}^n$. For simplicity we start from the zero point. We expect in advance that 1-norm of the solution is close enough to its 2-norm. In this case the standard accelerated Nesterov's directional search method can be improved. In the paper we show how to make Nesterov's method $n$-times faster (up to a $\log n$-factor) in this case. The basic idea is to use linear coupling, proposed by Allen-Zhu & Orecchia in 2014, and to make Grad-step in 2-norm, but Mirr-step in 1-norm. We show that for constrained optimization problems this approach stable upon an obstacle.

preprint2019arXiv

On the upper bound for the mathematical expectation of the norm of a vector uniformly distributed on the sphere and the phenomenon of concentration of uniform measure on the sphere

We considered the problem of obtaining upper bounds for the mathematical expectation of the $q$-norm ($2\leqslant q \leqslant \infty$) of the vector which is uniformly distributed on the unit Euclidean sphere. We finish the paper with numerical experiments illustrating our results.

preprint2019arXiv

The global rate of convergence for optimal tensor methods in smooth convex optimization

We consider convex optimization problems with the objective function having Lipshitz-continuous $p$-th order derivative, where $p\geq 1$. We propose a new tensor method, which closes the gap between the lower $O\left(\varepsilon^{-\frac{2}{3p+1}} \right)$ and upper $O\left(\varepsilon^{-\frac{1}{p+1}} \right)$ iteration complexity bounds for this class of optimization problems. We also consider uniformly convex functions, and show how the proposed method can be accelerated under this additional assumption. Moreover, we introduce a $p$-th order condition number which naturally arises in the complexity analysis of tensor methods under this assumption. Finally, we make a numerical study of the proposed optimal method and show that in practice it is faster than the best known accelerated tensor method. We also compare the performance of tensor methods for $p=2$ and $p=3$ and show that the 3rd-order method is superior to the 2nd-order method in practice.

preprint2019arXiv

Walrasian Equilibrium and Centralized Distributed Optimization from the point of view of Modern Convex Optimization Methods on the Example of Resource Allocation Problem

We consider the resource allocation problem and its numerical solution. The following constructions are demonstrated: 1) Walrasian price-adjustment mechanism for determining the equilibrium; 2) Decentralized role of the prices; 3) Slater's method for price restrictions (dual Lagrange multipliers); 4) A new mechanism for determining equilibrium prices, in which prices are fully controlled not by Center (Government), but by economic agents -- nodes (factories). In economic literature the convergence of the considered methods is only proved. In contrast, this paper provides an accurate analysis of the convergence rate of the described procedures for determining the equilibrium. The analysis is based on the primal-dual nature of the suggested algorithms. More precisely, in this article we propose the economic interpretation of the following numerical primal-dual methods of convex optimization: dichotomy and subgradient projection method. Numerical experiments conclude the paper.