paper-with-me

홈 › Papers

Adaptivity and Universality: Problem-dependent Universal Regret for Online Convex Optimization

2025-11-25 · Peng Zhao, Yu-Hu Yan, Hang Yu, Zhi-Hua Zhou arxiv

Universal online learning aims to achieve optimal regret guarantees without requiring prior knowledge of the curvature of online functions. Existing methods have established minimax-optimal regret bounds for universal online learning, where a single algorithm can simultaneously attain $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{T})$ regret for convex functions, $\mathcal{O}(d \log T)$ for exp-concave functions, and $\mathcal{O}(\log T)$ for strongly convex functions, where $T$ is the number of rounds and $d$ is the dimension of the feasible domain. However, these methods still lack problem-dependent adaptivity. In particular, no universal method provides regret bounds that scale with the gradient variation $V_T$, a key quantity that plays a crucial role in applications such as stochastic optimization and fast-rate convergence in games. In this work, we introduce UniGrad, a novel approach that achieves both universality and adaptivity, with two distinct realizations: UniGrad.Correct and UniGrad.Bregman. Both methods achieve universal regret guarantees that adapt to gradient variation, simultaneously attaining $\mathcal{O}(\log V_T)$ regret for strongly convex functions and $\mathcal{O}(d \log V_T)$ regret for exp-concave functions. For convex functions, the regret bounds differ: UniGrad.Correct achieves an $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{V_T \log V_T})$ bound while preserving the RVU property that is crucial for fast convergence in online games, whereas UniGrad.Bregman achieves the optimal $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{V_T})$ regret bound through a novel design. Both methods employ a meta algorithm with $\mathcal{O}(\log T)$ base learners, which naturally requires $\mathcal{O}(\log T)$ gradient queries per round. To enhance computational efficiency, we introduce UniGrad++, which retains the regret while reducing the gradient query to just $1$ per round via surrogate optimization. We further provide various implications.

📄 PDF Abstract BibTeX arXiv:2511.19937

Code (0)

등록된 구현이 없습니다.

Tasks

Computational EfficiencyStochastic Optimization

Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반

Dual Adaptivity: Universal Algorithms for Minimizing the Adaptive Regret of Convex Functions

2025-08-01 · Lijun Zhang, Wenhao Yang, Guanghui Wang, Wei Jiang 외 arxiv

To deal with changing environments, a new performance measure -- adaptive regret, defined as the maximum static regret over any interval, was proposed in online learning. Under the setting of online convex optimization, …

Gradient-Variation Online Adaptivity for Accelerated Optimization with Hölder Smoothness

2025-11-04 · Yuheng Zhao, Yu-Hu Yan, Kfir Yehuda Levy, Peng Zhao arxiv

Smoothness is known to be crucial for acceleration in offline optimization, and for gradient-variation regret minimization in online learning. Interestingly, these two problems are actually closely connected -- accelerat…

Dual Adaptivity: A Universal Algorithm for Minimizing the Adaptive Regret of Convex Functions

2019-06-26 · NeurIPS 2021 12 · Lijun Zhang, Guanghui Wang, Wei-Wei Tu, Zhi-Hua Zhou

To deal with changing environments, a new performance measure -- adaptive regret, defined as the maximum static regret over any interval, was proposed in online learning. Under the setting of online convex optimization, …

On the Universality of Online Mirror Descent

2011-12-01 · NeurIPS 2011 12 · Nati Srebro, Karthik Sridharan, Ambuj Tewari

We show that for a general class of convex online learning problems, Mirror Descent can always achieve a (nearly) optimal regret guarantee.

Stability-penalty-adaptive follow-the-regularized-leader: Sparsity, game-dependency, and best-of-both-worlds

2023-05-26 · NeurIPS 2023 11 · Taira Tsuchiya, Shinji Ito, Junya Honda

Adaptivity to the difficulties of a problem is a key property in sequential decision-making problems to broaden the applicability of algorithms. Follow-the-regularized-leader (FTRL) has recently emerged as one of the mos…

Decision MakingSequential Decision MakingSingle Particle Analysis