In recent years, designing distributed optimization algorithms for empirical risk minimization (ERM) has become an active research topic, mainly because of the practical need to deal with the huge volume of data. In this paper, we propose a general framework for training an ERM model by solving its dual problem in parallel over multiple machines. Viewed as special cases of our framework, several existing methods can be better understood. Our method provides a versatile approach for many large-scale machine learning problems, including linear binary multi- class classification, regression, and structured prediction. We show that our method, compared with existing approaches, enjoys global linear convergence for a broader class of problems and achieves faster empirical performance.
Our algorithm can be viewed from two different perspectives. If we consider solving , then it is similar to proximal (quasi-)Newton methods with some specific pick of the second-order approximation. A generalization of it appears as the block coordinate descent method , where the proximal quasi-Newton method is the special case that there is only one block of variables. One thing worth noticing is that @cite_10 requires the matrix in to be positive definite with a positive lower bound of the smallest eigenvalue over all iterations. We relaxed this condition to allow @math be indefinite or positive semidefinite when the @math term is strongly convex. This condition is used when Assumption holds, and in this case we do not need to add a damping term in our second order approximation. Namely, we can set @math in . The convergence theory of the inexact version of our framework follows from @cite_9 on the line of inexact variable metric methods for regularized optimization. The analysis of the exact version, derived independent of the theory in @cite_9 , is applicable to a broader class of problems, with the price of a slightly worse convergence rate.
@cite_9 @cite_10
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We introduce a framework for quasi-Newton forward--backward splitting algorithms (proximal quasi-Newton methods) with a metric induced by diagonal @math rank- @math symmetric positive definite matrices. This special type of metric allows for a highly efficient evaluation of the proximal mapping. The key to this efficiency is a general proximal calculus in the new metric. By using duality, formulas are derived that relate the proximal mapping in a rank- @math modified metric to the original metric. We also describe efficient implementations of the proximity calculation for a large class of functions; the implementations exploit the piece-wise linear nature of the dual problem. Then, we apply these results to acceleration of composite convex minimization problems, which leads to elegant quasi-Newton methods for which we prove convergence. The algorithm is tested on several numerical examples and compared to a comprehensive list of alternatives in the literature. Our quasi-Newton splitting algorithm with the prescribed metric compares favorably against state-of-the-art. The algorithm has extensive applications including signal processing, sparse recovery, machine learning and classification to name a few. A general, inexact, efficient proximal quasi-Newton algorithm for composite optimization problems has been proposed by Scheinberg and Tang (Math Program 160:495–529, 2016) and a sublinear global convergence rate has been established. In this paper, we analyze the global convergence rate of this method, in the both exact and inexact settings, in the case when the objective function is strongly convex. We also investigate a practical variant of this method by establishing a simple stopping criterion for the subproblem optimization. Furthermore, we consider an accelerated variant, based on FISTA of Beck and Teboulle (SIAM 2:183–202, 2009), to the proximal quasi-Newton algorithm. (SIAM 22:1042–1064, 2012) considered a similar accelerated method, where the convergence rate analysis relies on very strong impractical assumptions on Hessian estimates. We present a modified analysis while relaxing these assumptions and perform a numerical comparison of the accelerated proximal quasi-Newton algorithm and the regular one. Our analysis and computational results show that acceleration may not bring any benefit in the quasi-Newton setting. We present a unified framework for the design and convergence analysis of a class of algorithms based on approximate solution of proximal point subproblems. Our development further enhances the constructive approximation approach of the recently proposed hybrid projection–proximal and extragradient–proximal methods. Specifically, we introduce an even more flexible error tolerance criterion, as well as provide a unified view of these two algorithms. Our general method possesses global convergence and local (super)linear rate of convergence under standard assumptions, while using a constructive approximation criterion suitable for a number of specific implementations. For example, we show that close to a regular solution of a monotone system of semismooth equations, two Newton iterations are sufficient to solve the proximal subproblem within the required error tolerance. Such systems of equations arise naturally when reformulating the nonlinear complementarity problem. *Research of the first author is suppo... We investigate the behavior of quasi-Newton algorithms applied to minimize a nonsmooth function f, not necessarily convex. We introduce an inexact line search that generates a sequence of nested intervals containing a set of points of nonzero measure that satisfy the Armijo and Wolfe conditions if f is absolutely continuous along the line. Furthermore, the line search is guaranteed to terminate if f is semi-algebraic. It seems quite difficult to establish a convergence theorem for quasi-Newton methods applied to such general classes of functions, so we give a careful analysis of a special but illuminating case, the Euclidean norm, in one variable using the inexact line search and in two variables assuming that the line search is exact. In practice, we find that when f is locally Lipschitz and semi-algebraic with bounded sublevel sets, the BFGS (Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno) method with the inexact line search almost always generates sequences whose cluster points are Clarke stationary and with function values converging R-linearly to a Clarke stationary value. We give references documenting the successful use of BFGS in a variety of nonsmooth applications, particularly the design of low-order controllers for linear dynamical systems. We conclude with a challenging open question.