{"paper":{"title":"Acceleration by Stepsize Hedging I: Multi-Step Descent and the Silver Stepsize Schedule","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.DS"],"primary_cat":"math.OC","authors_text":"Jason M. Altschuler, Pablo A. Parrilo","submitted_at":"2023-09-14T17:24:45Z","abstract_excerpt":"Can we accelerate convergence of gradient descent without changing the algorithm -- just by carefully choosing stepsizes? Surprisingly, we show that the answer is yes. Our proposed Silver Stepsize Schedule optimizes strongly convex functions in $k^{\\log_{\\rho} 2} \\approx k^{0.7864}$ iterations, where $\\rho=1+\\sqrt{2}$ is the silver ratio and $k$ is the condition number. This is intermediate between the textbook unaccelerated rate $k$ and the accelerated rate $\\sqrt{k}$ due to Nesterov in 1983. The non-strongly convex setting is conceptually identical, and standard black-box reductions imply an"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2309.07879","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2309.07879/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}