Accelerating Rescaled Gradient Descent: Fast Optimization of Smooth Functions
Authors: Ashia Wilson, Lester Mackey, Andre Wibisono
AI-generated Key Points
- The paper introduces a family of algorithms called descent algorithms for optimizing convex and non-convex functions.
- A new first-order algorithm called rescaled gradient descent (RGD) is proposed, which has a faster convergence rate compared to traditional gradient descent methods under the assumption of strong smoothness of the objective function.
- Two frameworks are presented for accelerating descent methods in the case of convex objective functions: one following Nesterov's style and the other adopting Monteiro and Svaiter's style, both utilizing a single Lyapunov function.
- RGD can be accelerated using these frameworks under the same strong smoothness assumption.
- Examples of strongly smooth loss functions in machine learning are provided to support the theoretical findings, along with numerical experiments validating the results.
- Extensions to universal tensor methods and coordinate settings are presented for practical optimization problems.
- The work contributes to advancing optimization techniques by introducing descent algorithms and demonstrating their effectiveness in optimizing both convex and non-convex functions with improved convergence rates when applied to strongly smooth objective functions.
Abstract: We present a family of algorithms, called descent algorithms, for optimizing convex and non-convex functions. We also introduce a new first-order algorithm, called rescaled gradient descent (RGD), and show that RGD achieves a faster convergence rate than gradient descent provided the function is strongly smooth -- a natural generalization of the standard smoothness assumption on the objective function. When the objective function is convex, we present two novel frameworks for "accelerating" descent methods, one in the style of Nesterov and the other in the style of Monteiro and Svaiter, using a single Lyapunov. Rescaled gradient descent can be accelerated under the same strong smoothness assumption using both frameworks. We provide several examples of strongly smooth loss functions in machine learning and numerical experiments that verify our theoretical findings. We also present several extensions of our novel Lyapunov framework, including deriving optimal universal tensor methods and extending our framework to the coordinate setting.
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