arXiv Machine Learning

Adaptive Sharpness-Aware Minimization with a Polyak-type Step size: A Theory-Grounded Scheduler

arXiv:2606. 01827v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Sharpness-Aware Minimization (SAM) has established itself as a powerful and widely adopted optimizer for training machine learning models.

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
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
Sep 14

High-Probability Convergence of SGD via Batched Updates

The paper introduces Batched SGD, a variant that groups online samples into epochs and performs a single update per epoch using a low‑variance gradient estimate. This batching approach allows a straightforward high‑probability analysis without restrictive assumptions or auxiliary sequences, yielding near‑optimal rates for both strongly convex and non‑convex objectives under standard smoothness and sub‑Gaussian noise conditions. The authors also extend the method to federated learning, providing the first high‑probability guarantees with logarithmic communication complexity, linear speedup in the number of agents, and robustness to data heterogeneity.

By Feng Zhu, Robert W. Heath Jr., Aritra Mitra
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 30

Curvature-Weighted Gradient Diversity: A Noise Measure for Geometry-Adaptive SGD Schedules

arXiv:2606. 30455v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The standard convergence analysis of mini-batch stochastic gradient descent (SGD) models gradient noise using a single variance term that treats all parameter directions equally, ignoring the fact that noise in high-curvature directions has less impact because learning rates are already constrained there.

By Muhammad Hamza (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur), Ayush Goel (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur)
arXiv Statistics ML
2d ago

Exact information accounting for SGD methods

arXiv:2610.00446v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: As an alternative to the standard geometric analyses, we give an exact, information-theoretic analysis of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its v...

By Akshay Balsubramani
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
Jul 31

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.

By Yijiang Pang, Shuyang Yu, Bao Hoang, Jiayu Zhou