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Universal gradient methods for convex optimization problems

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Abstract

In this paper, we present new methods for black-box convex minimization. They do not need to know in advance the actual level of smoothness of the objective function. Their only essential input parameter is the required accuracy of the solution. At the same time, for each particular problem class they automatically ensure the best possible rate of convergence. We confirm our theoretical results by encouraging numerical experiments, which demonstrate that the fast rate of convergence, typical for the smooth optimization problems, sometimes can be achieved even on nonsmooth problem instances.

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Notes

  1. English translation of this paper was included in Sect. 2.3 in [4].

  2. Since in this problem the optimal value is known, we use it in the stopping criterion.

References

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Acknowledgments

The author is very thankful to three anonymous referees for careful reading and many suggestions, which significantly improved the initial variant of the paper.

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Correspondence to Yu Nesterov.

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The research results presented in this paper have been supported by a grant “Action de recherche concertè ARC 04/09-315” from the “Direction de la recherche scientifique - Communautè française de Belgique”. The author also acknowledges the support from Laboratory of Structural Methods of Data Analysis in Predictive Modelling, through RF government grant 11.G34.31.0073, and RFBR research projects 13-01-12007 ofi_m, 14-01-00722-a.

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Nesterov, Y. Universal gradient methods for convex optimization problems. Math. Program. 152, 381–404 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10107-014-0790-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10107-014-0790-0

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