Efficient Stochastic Approximation of Minimax Excess Risk Optimization

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Lijun, Bai, Haomin, Tu, Wei-Wei, Yang, Ping, Hu, Yao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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_version_ 1866914814421368832
author Zhang, Lijun
Bai, Haomin
Tu, Wei-Wei
Yang, Ping
Hu, Yao
author_facet Zhang, Lijun
Bai, Haomin
Tu, Wei-Wei
Yang, Ping
Hu, Yao
contents While traditional distributionally robust optimization (DRO) aims to minimize the maximal risk over a set of distributions, Agarwal and Zhang (2022) recently proposed a variant that replaces risk with excess risk. Compared to DRO, the new formulation$\unicode{x2013}$minimax excess risk optimization (MERO) has the advantage of suppressing the effect of heterogeneous noise in different distributions. However, the choice of excess risk leads to a very challenging minimax optimization problem, and currently there exists only an inefficient algorithm for empirical MERO. In this paper, we develop efficient stochastic approximation approaches which directly target MERO. Specifically, we leverage techniques from stochastic convex optimization to estimate the minimal risk of every distribution, and solve MERO as a stochastic convex-concave optimization (SCCO) problem with biased gradients. The presence of bias makes existing theoretical guarantees of SCCO inapplicable, and fortunately, we demonstrate that the bias, caused by the estimation error of the minimal risk, is under-control. Thus, MERO can still be optimized with a nearly optimal convergence rate. Moreover, we investigate a practical scenario where the quantity of samples drawn from each distribution may differ, and propose a stochastic approach that delivers distribution-dependent convergence rates.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2306_00026
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Efficient Stochastic Approximation of Minimax Excess Risk Optimization
Zhang, Lijun
Bai, Haomin
Tu, Wei-Wei
Yang, Ping
Hu, Yao
Optimization and Control
Machine Learning
While traditional distributionally robust optimization (DRO) aims to minimize the maximal risk over a set of distributions, Agarwal and Zhang (2022) recently proposed a variant that replaces risk with excess risk. Compared to DRO, the new formulation$\unicode{x2013}$minimax excess risk optimization (MERO) has the advantage of suppressing the effect of heterogeneous noise in different distributions. However, the choice of excess risk leads to a very challenging minimax optimization problem, and currently there exists only an inefficient algorithm for empirical MERO. In this paper, we develop efficient stochastic approximation approaches which directly target MERO. Specifically, we leverage techniques from stochastic convex optimization to estimate the minimal risk of every distribution, and solve MERO as a stochastic convex-concave optimization (SCCO) problem with biased gradients. The presence of bias makes existing theoretical guarantees of SCCO inapplicable, and fortunately, we demonstrate that the bias, caused by the estimation error of the minimal risk, is under-control. Thus, MERO can still be optimized with a nearly optimal convergence rate. Moreover, we investigate a practical scenario where the quantity of samples drawn from each distribution may differ, and propose a stochastic approach that delivers distribution-dependent convergence rates.
title Efficient Stochastic Approximation of Minimax Excess Risk Optimization
topic Optimization and Control
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.00026