Randomized block Krylov subspace methods form a powerful class of algorithms for computing the extreme eigenvalues of a symmetric matrix or the extreme singular values of a general matrix. The purpose of this paper is to develop new theoretical bounds on the performance of randomized block Krylov subspace methods for these problems. For matrices with polynomial spectral decay, the randomized block Krylov method can obtain an accurate spectral norm estimate using only a constant number of steps (that depends on the decay rate and the accuracy). Furthermore, the analysis reveals that the behavior of the algorithm depends in a delicate way on the block size. Numerical evidence confirms these predictions.
We propose and analyze volume-preserving parametric finite element methods for surface diffusion, conserved mean curvature flow and an intermediate evolution law in an axisymmetric setting. The weak formulations are presented in terms of the generating curves of the axisymmetric surfaces. The proposed numerical methods are based on piecewise linear parametric finite elements. The constructed fully practical schemes satisfy the conservation of the enclosed volume. In addition, we prove the unconditional stability and consider the distribution of vertices for the discretized schemes. The introduced methods are implicit and the resulting nonlinear systems of equations can be solved very efficiently and accurately via the Newton's iterative method. Numerical results are presented to show the accuracy and efficiency of the introduced schemes for computing the considered axisymmetric geometric flows.
The multiple-network poroelasticity (MPET) equations describe deformation and pressures in an elastic medium permeated by interacting fluid networks. In this paper, we (i) place these equations in the theoretical context of coupled elliptic-parabolic problems, (ii) use this context to derive residual-based a-posteriori error estimates and indicators for fully discrete MPET solutions and (iii) evaluate the performance of these error estimators in adaptive algorithms for a set of test cases: ranging from synthetic scenarios to physiologically realistic simulations of brain mechanics.
Large-scale optimization problems that seek sparse solutions have become ubiquitous. They are routinely solved with various specialized first-order methods. Although such methods are often fast, they usually struggle with not-so-well conditioned problems. In this paper, specialized variants of an interior point-proximal method of multipliers are proposed and analyzed for problems of this class. Computational experience on a variety of problems, namely, multi-period portfolio optimization, classification of data coming from functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, restoration of images corrupted by Poisson noise, and classification via regularized logistic regression, provides substantial evidence that interior point methods, equipped with suitable linear algebra, can offer a noticeable advantage over first-order approaches.
A well-known line of work (Barron, 1993; Breiman, 1993; Klusowski & Barron, 2018) provides bounds on the width $n$ of a ReLU two-layer neural network needed to approximate a function $f$ over the ball $\mathcal{B}_R(\mathbb{R}^d)$ up to error $\epsilon$, when the Fourier based quantity $C_f = \frac{1}{(2\pi)^{d/2}} \int_{\mathbb{R}^d} \|\xi\|^2 |\hat{f}(\xi)| \ d\xi$ is finite. More recently Ongie et al. (2019) used the Radon transform as a tool for analysis of infinite-width ReLU two-layer networks. In particular, they introduce the concept of Radon-based $\mathcal{R}$-norms and show that a function defined on $\mathbb{R}^d$ can be represented as an infinite-width two-layer neural network if and only if its $\mathcal{R}$-norm is finite. In this work, we extend the framework of Ongie et al. (2019) and define similar Radon-based semi-norms ($\mathcal{R}, \mathcal{U}$-norms) such that a function admits an infinite-width neural network representation on a bounded open set $\mathcal{U} \subseteq \mathbb{R}^d$ when its $\mathcal{R}, \mathcal{U}$-norm is finite. Building on this, we derive sparse (finite-width) neural network approximation bounds that refine those of Breiman (1993); Klusowski & Barron (2018). Finally, we show that infinite-width neural network representations on bounded open sets are not unique and study their structure, providing a functional view of mode connectivity.
We describe the first gradient methods on Riemannian manifolds to achieve accelerated rates in the non-convex case. Under Lipschitz assumptions on the Riemannian gradient and Hessian of the cost function, these methods find approximate first-order critical points faster than regular gradient descent. A randomized version also finds approximate second-order critical points. Both the algorithms and their analyses build extensively on existing work in the Euclidean case. The basic operation consists in running the Euclidean accelerated gradient descent method (appropriately safe-guarded against non-convexity) in the current tangent space, then moving back to the manifold and repeating. This requires lifting the cost function from the manifold to the tangent space, which can be done for example through the Riemannian exponential map. For this approach to succeed, the lifted cost function (called the pullback) must retain certain Lipschitz properties. As a contribution of independent interest, we prove precise claims to that effect, with explicit constants. Those claims are affected by the Riemannian curvature of the manifold, which in turn affects the worst-case complexity bounds for our optimization algorithms.
This paper considers a novel multi-agent linear stochastic approximation algorithm driven by Markovian noise and general consensus-type interaction, in which each agent evolves according to its local stochastic approximation process which depends on the information from its neighbors. The interconnection structure among the agents is described by a time-varying directed graph. While the convergence of consensus-based stochastic approximation algorithms when the interconnection among the agents is described by doubly stochastic matrices (at least in expectation) has been studied, less is known about the case when the interconnection matrix is simply stochastic. For any uniformly strongly connected graph sequences whose associated interaction matrices are stochastic, the paper derives finite-time bounds on the mean-square error, defined as the deviation of the output of the algorithm from the unique equilibrium point of the associated ordinary differential equation. For the case of interconnection matrices being stochastic, the equilibrium point can be any unspecified convex combination of the local equilibria of all the agents in the absence of communication. Both the cases with constant and time-varying step-sizes are considered. In the case when the convex combination is required to be a straight average and interaction between any pair of neighboring agents may be uni-directional, so that doubly stochastic matrices cannot be implemented in a distributed manner, the paper proposes a push-sum-type distributed stochastic approximation algorithm and provides its finite-time bound for the time-varying step-size case by leveraging the analysis for the consensus-type algorithm with stochastic matrices and developing novel properties of the push-sum algorithm.
When and why can a neural network be successfully trained? This article provides an overview of optimization algorithms and theory for training neural networks. First, we discuss the issue of gradient explosion/vanishing and the more general issue of undesirable spectrum, and then discuss practical solutions including careful initialization and normalization methods. Second, we review generic optimization methods used in training neural networks, such as SGD, adaptive gradient methods and distributed methods, and theoretical results for these algorithms. Third, we review existing research on the global issues of neural network training, including results on bad local minima, mode connectivity, lottery ticket hypothesis and infinite-width analysis.
We show that for the problem of testing if a matrix $A \in F^{n \times n}$ has rank at most $d$, or requires changing an $\epsilon$-fraction of entries to have rank at most $d$, there is a non-adaptive query algorithm making $\widetilde{O}(d^2/\epsilon)$ queries. Our algorithm works for any field $F$. This improves upon the previous $O(d^2/\epsilon^2)$ bound (SODA'03), and bypasses an $\Omega(d^2/\epsilon^2)$ lower bound of (KDD'14) which holds if the algorithm is required to read a submatrix. Our algorithm is the first such algorithm which does not read a submatrix, and instead reads a carefully selected non-adaptive pattern of entries in rows and columns of $A$. We complement our algorithm with a matching query complexity lower bound for non-adaptive testers over any field. We also give tight bounds of $\widetilde{\Theta}(d^2)$ queries in the sensing model for which query access comes in the form of $\langle X_i, A\rangle:=tr(X_i^\top A)$; perhaps surprisingly these bounds do not depend on $\epsilon$. We next develop a novel property testing framework for testing numerical properties of a real-valued matrix $A$ more generally, which includes the stable rank, Schatten-$p$ norms, and SVD entropy. Specifically, we propose a bounded entry model, where $A$ is required to have entries bounded by $1$ in absolute value. We give upper and lower bounds for a wide range of problems in this model, and discuss connections to the sensing model above.
This paper describes a suite of algorithms for constructing low-rank approximations of an input matrix from a random linear image of the matrix, called a sketch. These methods can preserve structural properties of the input matrix, such as positive-semidefiniteness, and they can produce approximations with a user-specified rank. The algorithms are simple, accurate, numerically stable, and provably correct. Moreover, each method is accompanied by an informative error bound that allows users to select parameters a priori to achieve a given approximation quality. These claims are supported by numerical experiments with real and synthetic data.
In this paper, we study the optimal convergence rate for distributed convex optimization problems in networks. We model the communication restrictions imposed by the network as a set of affine constraints and provide optimal complexity bounds for four different setups, namely: the function $F(\xb) \triangleq \sum_{i=1}^{m}f_i(\xb)$ is strongly convex and smooth, either strongly convex or smooth or just convex. Our results show that Nesterov's accelerated gradient descent on the dual problem can be executed in a distributed manner and obtains the same optimal rates as in the centralized version of the problem (up to constant or logarithmic factors) with an additional cost related to the spectral gap of the interaction matrix. Finally, we discuss some extensions to the proposed setup such as proximal friendly functions, time-varying graphs, improvement of the condition numbers.