2020, Ivanova, Anastasiya, Gasnikov, Alexander, Dvurechensky, Pavel, Dvinskikh, Darina, Tyurin, Alexander, Vorontsova, Evgeniya, Pasechnyuk, Dmitry

Ubiquitous in machine learning regularized empirical risk minimization problems are often composed of several blocks which can be treated using different types of oracles, e.g., full gradient, stochastic gradient or coordinate derivative. Optimal oracle complexity is known and achievable separately for the full gradient case, the stochastic gradient case, etc. We propose a generic framework to combine optimal algorithms for different types of oracles in order to achieve separate optimal oracle complexity for each block, i.e. for each block the corresponding oracle is called the optimal number of times for a given accuracy. As a particular example, we demonstrate that for a combination of a full gradient oracle and either a stochastic gradient oracle or a coordinate descent oracle our approach leads to the optimal number of oracle calls separately for the full gradient part and the stochastic/coordinate descent part.

2020, Gorbunov, Eduard, Dvinskikh, Darina, Gasnikov, Alexander

We consider stochastic convex optimization problems with affine constraints and develop several methods using either primal or dual approach to solve it. In the primal case we use special penalization technique to make the initial problem more convenient for using optimization methods. We propose algorithms to solve it based on Similar Triangles Method with Inexact Proximal Step for the convex smooth and strongly convex smooth objective functions and methods based on Gradient Sliding algorithm to solve the same problems in the non-smooth case. We prove the convergence guarantees in smooth convex case with deterministic first-order oracle. We propose and analyze three novel methods to handle stochastic convex optimization problems with affine constraints: SPDSTM, R-RRMA-AC-SA and SSTM_sc. All methods use stochastic dual oracle. SPDSTM is the stochastic primal-dual modification of STM and it is applied for the dual problem when the primal functional is strongly convex and Lipschitz continuous on some ball. R-RRMA-AC-SA is an accelerated stochastic method based on the restarts of RRMA-AC-SA and SSTM_sc is just stochastic STM for strongly convex problems. Both methods are applied to the dual problem when the primal functional is strongly convex, smooth and Lipschitz continuous on some ball and use stochastic dual first-order oracle. We develop convergence analysis for these methods for the unbiased and biased oracles respectively. Finally, we apply all aforementioned results and approaches to solve decentralized distributed optimization problem and discuss optimality of the obtained results in terms of communication rounds and number of oracle calls per node.

2020, Stonyakin, Fedor, Gasnikov, Alexander, Tyurin, Alexander, Pasechnyuk, Dmitry, Agafonov, Artem, Dvurechensky, Pavel, Dvinskikh, Darina, Piskunova, Victorya

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.

2020, Stonyakin, Fedor, Gasnikov, Alexander, Tyurin, Alexander, Pasechnyuk, Dmitry, Agafonov, Artem, Dvurechensky, Pavel, Dvinskikh, Darina, Artamonov, Sergei, Piskunova, Victorya

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, Bregman 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 conditional gradient method and universal method for variational inequalities with composite structure. These method works for smooth and non-smooth problems with optimal complexity without a priori knowledge of the problem smoothness. As a particular case of our general framework, we introduce relative smoothness for operators and propose an algorithm for VIs with such operator. We also generalize our framework for relatively strongly convex objectives and strongly monotone variational inequalities.