This book covers not only foundational materials but also the most recent progresses made during the past few years on the area of machine learning algorithms. In spite of the intensive research and development in this area, there does not exist a systematic treatment to introduce the fundamental concepts and recent progresses on machine learning algorithms, especially on those based on stochastic optimization methods, randomized algorithms, nonconvex optimization, distributed and online learning, and projection free methods. This book will benefit the broad audience in the area of machine learning, artificial intelligence and mathematical programming community by presenting these recent developments in a tutorial style, starting from the basic building blocks to the most carefully designed and complicated algorithms for machine learning.

An up-to-date account of the interplay between optimization and machine learning, accessible to students and researchers in both communities. The interplay between optimization and machine learning is one of the most important developments in modern computational science. Optimization formulations and methods are proving to be vital in designing algorithms to extract essential knowledge from huge volumes of data. Machine learning, however, is not simply a consumer of optimization technology but a rapidly evolving field that is itself generating new optimization ideas. This book captures the state of the art of the interaction between optimization and machine learning in a way that is accessible to researchers in both fields. Optimization approaches have enjoyed prominence in machine learning because of their wide applicability and attractive theoretical properties. The increasing complexity, size, and variety of today's machine learning models call for the reassessment of existing assumptions. This book starts the process of reassessment. It describes the resurgence in novel contexts of established frameworks such as first-order methods, stochastic approximations, convex relaxations, interior-point methods, and proximal methods. It also devotes attention to newer themes such as regularized optimization, robust optimization, gradient and subgradient methods, splitting techniques, and second-order methods. Many of these techniques draw inspiration from other fields, including operations research, theoretical computer science, and subfields of optimization. The book will enrich the ongoing cross-fertilization between the machine learning community and these other fields, and within the broader optimization community.

Advancements in the technology and availability of data sources have led to the `Big Data' era. Working with large data offers the potential to uncover more fine-grained patterns and take timely and accurate decisions, but it also creates a lot of challenges such as slow training and scalability of machine learning models. One of the major challenges in machine learning is to develop efficient and scalable learning algorithms, i.e., optimization techniques to solve large scale learning problems. Stochastic Optimization for Large-scale Machine Learning identifies different areas of improvement and recent research directions to tackle the challenge. Developed optimisation techniques are also explored to improve machine learning algorithms based on data access and on first and second order optimisation methods. Key Features: Bridges machine learning and Optimisation. Bridges theory and practice in machine learning. Identifies key research areas and recent research directions to solve large-scale machine learning problems. Develops optimisation techniques to improve machine learning algorithms for big data problems. The book will be a valuable reference to practitioners and researchers as well as students in the field of machine learning.

This book on optimization includes forewords by Michael I. Jordan, Zongben Xu and Zhi-Quan Luo. Machine learning relies heavily on optimization to solve problems with its learning models, and first-order optimization algorithms are the mainstream approaches. The acceleration of first-order optimization algorithms is crucial for the efficiency of machine learning. Written by leading experts in the field, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to, and state-of-the-art review of accelerated first-order optimization algorithms for machine learning. It discusses a variety of methods, including deterministic and stochastic algorithms, where the algorithms can be synchronous or asynchronous, for unconstrained and constrained problems, which can be convex or non-convex. Offering a rich blend of ideas, theories and proofs, the book is up-to-date and self-contained. It is an excellent reference resource for users who are seeking faster optimization algorithms, as well as for graduate students and researchers wanting to grasp the frontiers of optimization in machine learning in a short time.

Optimization for Learning and Control Comprehensive resource providing a masters’ level introduction to optimization theory and algorithms for learning and control Optimization for Learning and Control describes how optimization is used in these domains, giving a thorough introduction to both unsupervised learning, supervised learning, and reinforcement learning, with an emphasis on optimization methods for large-scale learning and control problems. Several applications areas are also discussed, including signal processing, system identification, optimal control, and machine learning. Today, most of the material on the optimization aspects of deep learning that is accessible for students at a Masters’ level is focused on surface-level computer programming; deeper knowledge about the optimization methods and the trade-offs that are behind these methods is not provided. The objective of this book is to make this scattered knowledge, currently mainly available in publications in academic journals, accessible for Masters’ students in a coherent way. The focus is on basic algorithmic principles and trade-offs. Optimization for Learning and Control covers sample topics such as: Optimization theory and optimization methods, covering classes of optimization problems like least squares problems, quadratic problems, conic optimization problems and rank optimization. First-order methods, second-order methods, variable metric methods, and methods for nonlinear least squares problems. Stochastic optimization methods, augmented Lagrangian methods, interior-point methods, and conic optimization methods. Dynamic programming for solving optimal control problems and its generalization to reinforcement learning. How optimization theory is used to develop theory and tools of statistics and learning, e.g., the maximum likelihood method, expectation maximization, k-means clustering, and support vector machines. How calculus of variations is used in optimal control and for deriving the family of exponential distributions. Optimization for Learning and Control is an ideal resource on the subject for scientists and engineers learning about which optimization methods are useful for learning and control problems; the text will also appeal to industry professionals using machine learning for different practical applications.

Optimization has been the workhorse of solving machine learning problems. However, the efficiency of these methods remains far from satisfaction to meet the ever-growing demand that arises in modern applications. In this context, the present dissertation will focus on two fundamental classes of machine learning problems: 1) stochastic nested problems, where one subproblem builds upon the solution of others; and, 2) stochastic distributed problems, where the subproblems are coupled through sharing the common variables. One key difficulty of solving stochastic nested problems is that the hierarchically coupled structure makes the computation of (stochastic) gradients, the basic element in first-order optimization machinery, prohibitively expensive or even impossible.We will develop the first stochastic optimization method, which runs in a single-loop manner and achieves the same sample complexity as the stochastic gradient descent method for non-nested problems. One key difficulty of solving stochastic distributed problems is the resource intensity, especially when algorithms are running atresource-limited devices. In this context, we will introduce a class of communication-adaptive stochastic gradient descent (SGD) methods, which adaptively reuse the stale gradients, thus saving communication. We will show that the new algorithms have convergence rates comparable to original SGD and Adam algorithms, but enjoy impressive empirical performance in terms of total communication round reduction.