arXiv:2608. 25551v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is typically analyzed at a deterministic horizon chosen before the algorithm is run, even though practical stopping decisions are made adaptively by inspecting the evolving trajectory.
By Liviu Aolaritei, Lucas L\'evy, Francis Bach, Michael I. Jordan
arXiv:2610.19444v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Random reshuffling stochastic gradient descent (RR-SGD) is widely used for finite-sum optimization in machine learning. For convex $L$-smooth compone...
By Zijun Chen, Zihan Zhang
arXiv:2505.20817v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Gradient clipping is widely used in language-model training to control heavy-tailed gradient noise and can improve convergence guarantees ove...
By Taha El Bakkali El Kadi, Savelii Chezhegov, Aleksandr Beznosikov, Samuel Horv\'ath, Eduard Gorbunov
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
The paper establishes the first optimal last‑iterate convergence rates, in high probability, for Clipped‑SGD when the gradient noise is heavy‑tailed. It addresses the gap left by earlier results that required strong noise assumptions, such as exponentially decaying tails. By proving these rates, the authors provide theoretical support for the practical effectiveness of gradient clipping in stochastic convex optimization.
By Zijian Liu
arXiv:2602. 01903v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This work studies online episodic tabular Markov decision processes (MDPs) with known transitions and develops best-of-both-worlds algorithms that achieve refined data-dependent regret bounds in the adversarial regime and variance-dependent regret bounds in the stochastic regime.
By Mingyi Li, Taira Tsuchiya, Kenji Yamanishi