2014/01/27 by Richard H. Byrd, Samantha Hansen, Byrd, R. H. +5 · 14 citations
Computer Science · Engineering · Mathematics · #Advanced Optimization Algorithms Research #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Mathematics #Machine Learning (cs.LG) #Machine Learning (stat.ML) #Optimization and Control (math.OC) #Sparse and Compressive Sensing Techniques #Stochastic Gradient Optimization Techniques
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1401.7020
openalex publication_date 2014/01/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The question of how to incorporate curvature information in stochastic approximation methods is challenging. The direct application of classical quasi- Newton updating techniques for deterministic optimization leads to noisy curvature estimates that have harmful effects on the robustness of the iteration. In this paper, we propose a stochastic quasi-Newton method that is efficient, robust and scalable. It employs the classical BFGS update formula in its limited memory form, and is based on the observation that it is beneficial to collect curvature information pointwise, and at regular intervals, through (sub-sampled) Hessian-vector products. This technique differs from the classical approach that would compute differences of gradients, and where controlling the quality of the curvature estimates can be difficult. We present numerical results on problems arising in machine learning that suggest that the proposed method shows much promise.