arXiv AI

The Role of Gradient Modification in Heavy-Tailed Nonconvex Stochastic Min-Max Optimization

arXiv Machine Learning
3d ago

Almost Sure Convergence Analysis of Stochastic Gradient Methods with Clipping and Additive Noise

The paper proves that stochastic gradient descent with gradient clipping and additive Gaussian noise (SGD‑CN) converges almost surely under smoothness and bounded noise assumptions, given standard decaying step sizes. The analysis extends to momentum variants such as the stochastic heavy ball and Nesterov's accelerated gradient, showing that careful energy constructions yield similar guarantees. These results provide stronger theoretical foundations for understanding the pathwise behaviour of clipped stochastic gradient methods in both convex and nonconvex regimes.

By Amartya Mukherjee, Jun Liu
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 2

Safeguarded Stochastic Polyak Step Sizes for Non-smooth Optimization: Robust Performance Without Small (Sub)Gradients

arXiv:2512. 02342v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The stochastic Polyak step size (SPS) has proven to be a promising choice for stochastic gradient descent (SGD), delivering competitive performance relative to state-of-the-art methods on smooth convex and non-convex optimization problems, including deep neural network training.

By Dimitris Oikonomou, Nicolas Loizou