Towards diffusion approximations for stochastic gradient descent without replacement
Résumé
Stochastic gradient descent without replacement or reshuffling (SGDo) is predominantly used to train machine learning models in practice. However, the mathematical theory of this algorithm remains underexplored compared to its "with replacement" and "infinite data" counterparts. We propose a stochastic, continuous-time approximation to SGDo based on a family of stochastic differential equations driven by a stochastic process we call epoched Brownian motion, which encapsulates the behavior of reusing the same sequence of data points in subsequent epochs. We investigate this diffusion approximation by considering an application of SGDo to linear regression. Explicit convergence results are derived for constant learning rates and a sequence of learning rates satisfying the Robbins-Monro conditions. Finally, the validity of continuous-time dynamics are further substantiated by numerical experiments.
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