SEGA: Variance Reduction via Gradient Sketching

Abstract

We propose a randomized first order optimization method--SEGA (SkEtchedGrAdient method)-- which progressively throughout its iterations builds avariance-reduced estimate of the gradient from random linear measurements(sketches) of the gradient obtained from an oracle. In each iteration, SEGAupdates the current estimate of the gradient through a sketch-and-projectoperation using the information provided by the latest sketch, and this issubsequently used to compute an unbiased estimate of the true gradient througha random relaxation procedure. This unbiased estimate is then used to perform agradient step. Unlike standard subspace descent methods, such as coordinatedescent, SEGA can be used for optimization problems with a non-separableproximal term. We provide a general convergence analysis and prove linearconvergence for strongly convex objectives. In the special case of coordinatesketches, SEGA can be enhanced with various techniques such as importancesampling, minibatching and acceleration, and its rate is up to a small constantfactor identical to the best-known rate of coordinate descent.