arXiv Machine Learning

Towards Stability of Parameter-Free Optimization

arXiv:2405. 04376v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Hyperparameter tuning, particularly the selection of an appropriate learning rate in adaptive gradient training methods, remains a challenge.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

ExpTest: Loss-Curve Hypothesis Testing for Autonomous Learning-Rate Selection in Deep Neural Networks

ExpTest is an autonomous learning‑rate controller that uses the training loss curve as an online signal to perform sequential statistical tests on theoretically motivated windows, detecting convergent behavior and triggering learning‑rate reductions. It combines a covariance‑based initial learning‑rate estimate, curvature‑motivated window sizing, and a two‑phase test‑driven decay, relying on the approximately exponential decay predicted under linearized network dynamics. Experiments on regression, classification, forecasting, and natural‑language tasks across various architectures show that ExpTest achieves competitive performance compared to hand‑tuned SGD baselines and recent learning‑rate‑free methods, without requiring manual initial learning‑rate selection or predefined scheduling.

By Zan Chaudhry, Naoko Mizuno
arXiv AI
Sep 21

Matrix AdaGrad: Row-wise and Column-wise Adaptive Subgradient Methods

The paper introduces Row-wise Matrix AdaGrad and Column-wise Matrix AdaGrad, two adaptive subgradient methods that extend AdaGrad to matrix-valued parameters by using row-wise and column-wise proximal functions. It presents a general Online Mirror Descent framework that derives these optimizers through online regret minimization, providing regret guarantees that can be tighter than entry-wise AdaGrad for structured gradients. Experiments on matrix factorization and deep neural-network training show that aligning adaptive scaling with matrix structure improves optimization stability, allows larger learning rates, and supports greater network depth.

By Wenpeng Zhang, Runsheng Yu, Peilin Zhao
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

AdamX: Cosine similarity meets gradient descent

AdamX is a new first‑order optimizer that uses cosine similarity to adaptively control update magnitudes, making it scalable, model‑agnostic, and easy to add to existing training pipelines. It also includes a variance rectification scheme that smooths optimization early in training. Empirical results show AdamX achieves competitive convergence rates across various benchmark datasets and architectures, measured by the number of epochs needed to hit predefined performance thresholds under a fixed hyperparameter budget.

By Francisco Caldas, Ruben Belo, Cl\'audia Soares
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

AOS: Adaptive Optimizer Switching via Training-State Signals for Faster Convergence and Better Generalization

arXiv:2608. 01997v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Single-optimizer training is a poor fit for the distinct phases of deep network optimization: adaptive methods handle noisy early gradients well but overshoot flat minima, while SGD with momentum generalizes better in the late phase but converges slowly early on.

By Alok Kumar Pandey, Umang Chaturvedi, Aatish Rana, Gopi Krishna Nedanuri
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 7

Learning rate adaptive stochastic gradient descent optimization methods: numerical simulations for deep learning methods for partial differential equations and convergence analyses

arXiv:2406. 14340v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The standard stochastic gradient descent (SGD) optimization method, as well as adaptive methods such as the Adam optimizer fail to converge if the learning rates do not converge to zero (particularly, in the situation of constant learning rates).

By Steffen Dereich, Arnulf Jentzen, Adrian Riekert
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 18

Stochastic Adaptive Gradient Descent Without Descent

arXiv:2509. 14969v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We introduce a new adaptive step-size strategy for convex optimization with stochastic gradient that exploits the local geometry of the objective function only by means of a first-order stochastic oracle and without any hyper-parameter tuning.

By Jean-Fran\c{c}ois Aujol, J\'er\'emie Bigot, Camille Castera
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 11

Gradient Under Microscope: Benchmarking Resource Utilization of Memory-Efficient Gradient Computation Methods

arXiv:2608. 08961v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI training's rising resource intensity is straining electricity supplies and carbon budgets, motivating systematic study of memory-efficient training on constrained hardware.

By Sarthak Mahapatra, Zihan Zhou, Khatoon Khedri, Mehdi Hosseinzadeh, Reza Rawassizadeh