In this paper, we propose GT-GDA, a distributed optimization method to solve saddle point problems of the form: $\min_{\mathbf{x}} \max_{\mathbf{y}} \{F(\mathbf{x},\mathbf{y}) :=G(\mathbf{x}) + \langle \mathbf{y}, \overline{P} \mathbf{x} \rangle - H(\mathbf{y})\}$, where the functions $G(\cdot)$, $H(\cdot)$, and the the coupling matrix $\overline{P}$ are distributed over a strongly connected network of nodes. GT-GDA is a first-order method that uses gradient tracking to eliminate the dissimilarity caused by heterogeneous data distribution among the nodes. In the most general form, GT-GDA includes a consensus over the local coupling matrices to achieve the optimal (unique) saddle point, however, at the expense of increased communication. To avoid this, we propose a more efficient variant GT-GDA-Lite that does not incur the additional communication and analyze its convergence in various scenarios. We show that GT-GDA converges linearly to the unique saddle point solution when $G(\cdot)$ is smooth and convex, $H(\cdot)$ is smooth and strongly convex, and the global coupling matrix $\overline{P}$ has full column rank. We further characterize the regime under which GT-GDA exhibits a network topology-independent convergence behavior. We next show the linear convergence of GT-GDA to an error around the unique saddle point, which goes to zero when the coupling cost ${\langle \mathbf y, \overline{P} \mathbf x \rangle}$ is common to all nodes, or when $G(\cdot)$ and $H(\cdot)$ are quadratic. Numerical experiments illustrate the convergence properties and importance of GT-GDA and GT-GDA-Lite for several applications.
Although robust learning and local differential privacy are both widely studied fields of research, combining the two settings is just starting to be explored. We consider the problem of estimating a discrete distribution in total variation from $n$ contaminated data batches under a local differential privacy constraint. A fraction $1-\epsilon$ of the batches contain $k$ i.i.d. samples drawn from a discrete distribution $p$ over $d$ elements. To protect the users' privacy, each of the samples is privatized using an $\alpha$-locally differentially private mechanism. The remaining $\epsilon n $ batches are an adversarial contamination. The minimax rate of estimation under contamination alone, with no privacy, is known to be $\epsilon/\sqrt{k}+\sqrt{d/kn}$, up to a $\sqrt{\log(1/\epsilon)}$ factor. Under the privacy constraint alone, the minimax rate of estimation is $\sqrt{d^2/\alpha^2 kn}$. We show that combining the two constraints leads to a minimax estimation rate of $\epsilon\sqrt{d/\alpha^2 k}+\sqrt{d^2/\alpha^2 kn}$ up to a $\sqrt{\log(1/\epsilon)}$ factor, larger than the sum of the two separate rates. We provide a polynomial-time algorithm achieving this bound, as well as a matching information theoretic lower bound.
The problems of frictional contacts are the key to the investigation of mechanical performances of composite materials under varying service environments. The paper considers a linear elasticity system with strongly heterogeneous coefficients and quasistatic Tresca's friction law, and we study the homogenization theories under the frameworks of H-convergence and small $\epsilon$-periodicity. The qualitative result is based on H-convergence, which shows the original oscillating solutions will converge weakly to the homogenized solution, while our quantitative result provides an estimate of asymptotic errors in the $H^1$ norm for the periodic homogenization. We also design several numerical experiments to validate the convergence rates in the quantitative analysis.
This paper focuses on stochastic saddle point problems with decision-dependent distributions. These are problems whose objective is the expected value of a stochastic payoff function, where random variables are drawn from a distribution induced by a distributional map. For general distributional maps, the problem of finding saddle points is in general computationally burdensome, even if the distribution is known. To enable a tractable solution approach, we introduce the notion of equilibrium points -- which are saddle points for the stationary stochastic minimax problem that they induce -- and provide conditions for their existence and uniqueness. We demonstrate that the distance between the two solution types is bounded provided that the objective has a strongly-convex-strongly-concave payoff and a Lipschitz continuous distributional map. We develop deterministic and stochastic primal-dual algorithms and demonstrate their convergence to the equilibrium point. In particular, by modeling errors emerging from a stochastic gradient estimator as sub-Weibull random variables, we provide error bounds in expectation and in high probability that hold for each iteration. Moreover, we show convergence to a neighborhood almost surely. Finally, we investigate a condition on the distributional map -- which we call opposing mixture dominance -- that ensures that the objective is strongly-convex-strongly-concave. We tailor the convergence results for the primal-dual algorithms to this opposing mixture dominance setup.
Covariance estimation for matrix-valued data has received an increasing interest in applications. Unlike previous works that rely heavily on matrix normal distribution assumption and the requirement of fixed matrix size, we propose a class of distribution-free regularized covariance estimation methods for high-dimensional matrix data under a separability condition and a bandable covariance structure. Under these conditions, the original covariance matrix is decomposed into a Kronecker product of two bandable small covariance matrices representing the variability over row and column directions. We formulate a unified framework for estimating bandable covariance, and introduce an efficient algorithm based on rank one unconstrained Kronecker product approximation. The convergence rates of the proposed estimators are established, and the derived minimax lower bound shows our proposed estimator is rate-optimal under certain divergence regimes of matrix size. We further introduce a class of robust covariance estimators and provide theoretical guarantees to deal with heavy-tailed data. We demonstrate the superior finite-sample performance of our methods using simulations and real applications from a gridded temperature anomalies dataset and a S&P 500 stock data analysis.
We consider the problem of distributed pose graph optimization (PGO) that has important applications in multi-robot simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). We propose the majorization minimization (MM) method for distributed PGO ($\mathsf{MM\!\!-\!\!PGO}$) that applies to a broad class of robust loss kernels. The $\mathsf{MM\!\!-\!\!PGO}$ method is guaranteed to converge to first-order critical points under mild conditions. Furthermore, noting that the $\mathsf{MM\!\!-\!\!PGO}$ method is reminiscent of proximal methods, we leverage Nesterov's method and adopt adaptive restarts to accelerate convergence. The resulting accelerated MM methods for distributed PGO -- both with a master node in the network ($\mathsf{AMM\!\!-\!\!PGO}^*$) and without ($\mathsf{AMM\!\!-\!\!PGO}^{#}$) -- have faster convergence in contrast to the $\mathsf{MM\!\!-\!\!PGO}$ method without sacrificing theoretical guarantees. In particular, the $\mathsf{AMM\!\!-\!\!PGO}^{#}$ method, which needs no master node and is fully decentralized, features a novel adaptive restart scheme and has a rate of convergence comparable to that of the $\mathsf{AMM\!\!-\!\!PGO}^*$ method using a master node to aggregate information from all the other nodes. The efficacy of this work is validated through extensive applications to 2D and 3D SLAM benchmark datasets and comprehensive comparisons against existing state-of-the-art methods, indicating that our MM methods converge faster and result in better solutions to distributed PGO.
We study the distributed minimum spanning tree (MST) problem, a fundamental problem in distributed computing. It is well-known that distributed MST can be solved in $\tilde{O}(D+\sqrt{n})$ rounds in the standard CONGEST model (where $n$ is the network size and $D$ is the network diameter) and this is essentially the best possible round complexity (up to logarithmic factors). However, in resource-constrained networks such as ad hoc wireless and sensor networks, nodes spending so much time can lead to significant spending of resources such as energy. Motivated by the above consideration, we study distributed algorithms for MST under the \emph{sleeping model} [Chatterjee et al., PODC 2020], a model for design and analysis of resource-efficient distributed algorithms. In the sleeping model, a node can be in one of two modes in any round -- \emph{sleeping} or \emph{awake} (unlike the traditional model where nodes are always awake). Only the rounds in which a node is \emph{awake} are counted, while \emph{sleeping} rounds are ignored. A node spends resources only in the awake rounds and hence the main goal is to minimize the \emph{awake complexity} of a distributed algorithm, the worst-case number of rounds any node is awake. We present deterministic and randomized distributed MST algorithms that have an \emph{optimal} awake complexity of $O(\log n)$ time with a matching lower bound. We also show that our randomized awake-optimal algorithm has essentially the best possible round complexity by presenting a lower bound of $\tilde{\Omega}(n)$ on the product of the awake and round complexity of any distributed algorithm (including randomized) that outputs an MST, where $\tilde{\Omega}$ hides a $1/(\text{polylog } n)$ factor.
Over the years, many graph problems specifically those in NP-complete are studied by a wide range of researchers. Some famous examples include graph colouring, travelling salesman problem and subgraph isomorphism. Most of these problems are typically addressed by exact algorithms, approximate algorithms and heuristics. There are however some drawback for each of these methods. Recent studies have employed learning-based frameworks such as machine learning techniques in solving these problems, given that they are useful in discovering new patterns in structured data that can be represented using graphs. This research direction has successfully attracted a considerable amount of attention. In this survey, we provide a systematic review mainly on classic graph problems in which learning-based approaches have been proposed in addressing the problems. We discuss the overview of each framework, and provide analyses based on the design and performance of the framework. Some potential research questions are also suggested. Ultimately, this survey gives a clearer insight and can be used as a stepping stone to the research community in studying problems in this field.
Multigrid is a powerful solver for large-scale linear systems arising from discretized partial differential equations. The convergence theory of multigrid methods for symmetric positive definite problems has been well developed over the past decades, while, for nonsymmetric problems, such theory is still not mature. As a foundation for multigrid analysis, two-grid convergence theory plays an important role in motivating multigrid algorithms. Regarding two-grid methods for nonsymmetric problems, most previous works focus on the spectral radius of iteration matrix or rely on convergence measures that are typically difficult to compute in practice. Moreover, the existing results are confined to two-grid methods with exact solution of the coarse-grid system. In this paper, we analyze the convergence of a two-grid method for nonsymmetric positive definite problems (e.g., linear systems arising from the discretizations of convection-diffusion equations). In the case of exact coarse solver, we establish an elegant identity for characterizing two-grid convergence factor, which is measured by a smoother-induced norm. The identity can be conveniently used to derive a class of optimal restriction operators and analyze how the convergence factor is influenced by restriction. More generally, we present some convergence estimates for an inexact variant of the two-grid method, in which both linear and nonlinear coarse solvers are considered.
In the storied Colonel Blotto game, two colonels allocate $a$ and $b$ troops, respectively, to $k$ distinct battlefields. A colonel wins a battle if they assign more troops to that particular battle, and each colonel seeks to maximize their total number of victories. Despite the problem's formulation in 1921, the first polynomial-time algorithm to compute Nash equilibrium (NE) strategies for this game was discovered only quite recently. In 2016, \citep{ahmadinejad_dehghani_hajiaghayi_lucier_mahini_seddighin_2019} formulated a breakthrough algorithm to compute NE strategies for the Colonel Blotto game\footnote{To the best of our knowledge, the algorithm from \citep{ahmadinejad_dehghani_hajiaghayi_lucier_mahini_seddighin_2019} has computational complexity $O(k^{14}\max\{a,b\}^{13})$}, receiving substantial media coverage (e.g. \citep{Insider}, \citep{NSF}, \citep{ScienceDaily}). In this work, we present the first known $\epsilon$-approximation algorithm to compute NE strategies in the two-player Colonel Blotto game in runtime $\widetilde{O}(\epsilon^{-4} k^8 \max\{a,b\}^2)$ for arbitrary settings of these parameters. Moreover, this algorithm computes approximate coarse correlated equilibrium strategies in the multiplayer (continuous and discrete) Colonel Blotto game (when there are $\ell > 2$ colonels) with runtime $\widetilde{O}(\ell \epsilon^{-4} k^8 n^2 + \ell^2 \epsilon^{-2} k^3 n (n+k))$, where $n$ is the maximum troop count. Before this work, no polynomial-time algorithm was known to compute exact or approximate equilibrium (in any sense) strategies for multiplayer Colonel Blotto with arbitrary parameters. Our algorithm computes these approximate equilibria by a novel (to the author's knowledge) sampling technique with which we implicitly perform multiplicative weights update over the exponentially many strategies available to each player.
This manuscript portrays optimization as a process. In many practical applications the environment is so complex that it is infeasible to lay out a comprehensive theoretical model and use classical algorithmic theory and mathematical optimization. It is necessary as well as beneficial to take a robust approach, by applying an optimization method that learns as one goes along, learning from experience as more aspects of the problem are observed. This view of optimization as a process has become prominent in varied fields and has led to some spectacular success in modeling and systems that are now part of our daily lives.