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EE Systems Seminar

Thursday, January 28, 2021
12:00pm to 1:00pm
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Online Event
Finding Global Minima via Kernel Approximations
Francis Bach, Researcher, INRIA/ENS,

We consider the global minimization of smooth functions based solely on function evaluations. Algorithms that achieve the optimal number of function evaluations for a given precision level typically rely on explicitly constructing an approximation of the function which is then minimized with algorithms that have exponential running-time complexity. In this paper, we consider an approach that jointly models the function to approximate and finds a global minimum. This is done by using infinite sums of square smooth functions and has strong links with polynomial sum-of-squares hierarchies. Leveraging recent representation properties of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces, the infinite-dimensional optimization problem can be solved by subsampling in time polynomial in the number of function evaluations, and with theoretical guarantees on the obtained minimum. (Joint work with Alessandro Rudi and Ulysse Marteau-Ferey).

Host: Taylan Kargin

For more information, please contact Caroline Murphy by email at [email protected].