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 a general method for creating data‑adaptive, anytime‑valid envelopes that can be applied to a wide range of iterative stochastic algorithms. By reducing error analysis to a single requirement—time‑uniform concentration for predictably weighted sums of noise—the authors provide off‑the‑shelf boundary constructions using mixtures, stitching, and betting martingales. These envelopes are shown to be applicable to algorithms such as stochastic gradient descent, temporal difference learning, and Bures‑Wasserstein SGD, and they either match or improve upon existing bounds, with practical implementation details and numerical validation.
By Soham Bonnerjee, Aaditya Ramdas
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
arXiv:2610. 14567v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: This paper develops strong Gaussian approximations (KMT type) for constant learning rate stochastic gradient descent (SGD).
By Joseph Keslin, Wei Biao Wu
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:2606. 03831v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper investigates non-stationary online learning using the metric of interval regret, which requires an online algorithm to perform well over every time interval.
By Yan-Feng Xie, Shuche Wang, Peng Zhao, Zhi-Hua Zhou