How Good is SGD with Random Shuffling?

Itay Safran, Ohad Shamir
Proceedings of Thirty Third Conference on Learning Theory, PMLR 125:3250-3284, 2020.

Abstract

We study the performance of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) on smooth and strongly-convex finite-sum optimization problems. In contrast to the majority of existing theoretical works, which assume that individual functions are sampled with replacement, we focus here on popular but poorly-understood heuristics, which involve going over random permutations of the individual functions. This setting has been investigated in several recent works, but the optimal error rates remain unclear. In this paper, we provide lower bounds on the expected optimization error with these heuristics (using SGD with any constant step size), which elucidate their advantages and disadvantages. In particular, we prove that after $k$ passes over $n$ individual functions, if the functions are re-shuffled after every pass, the best possible optimization error for SGD is at least $\Omega\left(1/(nk)^2+1/nk^3\right)$, which partially corresponds to recently derived upper bounds. Moreover, if the functions are only shuffled once, then the lower bound increases to $\Omega(1/nk^2)$. Since there are strictly smaller upper bounds for repeated reshuffling, this proves an inherent performance gap between SGD with single shuffling and repeated shuffling. As a more minor contribution, we also provide a non-asymptotic $\Omega(1/k^2)$ lower bound (independent of $n$) for the incremental gradient method, when no random shuffling takes place. Finally, we provide an indication that our lower bounds are tight, by proving matching upper bounds for univariate quadratic functions.

Cite this Paper

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v125-safran20a, title = {How Good is SGD with Random Shuffling?}, author = {Safran, Itay and Shamir, Ohad}, booktitle = {Proceedings of Thirty Third Conference on Learning Theory}, pages = {3250--3284}, year = {2020}, editor = {Abernethy, Jacob and Agarwal, Shivani}, volume = {125}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {09--12 Jul}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {http://proceedings.mlr.press/v125/safran20a/safran20a.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v125/safran20a.html}, abstract = { We study the performance of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) on smooth and strongly-convex finite-sum optimization problems. In contrast to the majority of existing theoretical works, which assume that individual functions are sampled with replacement, we focus here on popular but poorly-understood heuristics, which involve going over random permutations of the individual functions. This setting has been investigated in several recent works, but the optimal error rates remain unclear. In this paper, we provide lower bounds on the expected optimization error with these heuristics (using SGD with any constant step size), which elucidate their advantages and disadvantages. In particular, we prove that after $k$ passes over $n$ individual functions, if the functions are re-shuffled after every pass, the best possible optimization error for SGD is at least $\Omega\left(1/(nk)^2+1/nk^3\right)$, which partially corresponds to recently derived upper bounds. Moreover, if the functions are only shuffled once, then the lower bound increases to $\Omega(1/nk^2)$. Since there are strictly smaller upper bounds for repeated reshuffling, this proves an inherent performance gap between SGD with single shuffling and repeated shuffling. As a more minor contribution, we also provide a non-asymptotic $\Omega(1/k^2)$ lower bound (independent of $n$) for the incremental gradient method, when no random shuffling takes place. Finally, we provide an indication that our lower bounds are tight, by proving matching upper bounds for univariate quadratic functions.} }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T How Good is SGD with Random Shuffling? %A Itay Safran %A Ohad Shamir %B Proceedings of Thirty Third Conference on Learning Theory %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2020 %E Jacob Abernethy %E Shivani Agarwal %F pmlr-v125-safran20a %I PMLR %P 3250--3284 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v125/safran20a.html %V 125 %X We study the performance of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) on smooth and strongly-convex finite-sum optimization problems. In contrast to the majority of existing theoretical works, which assume that individual functions are sampled with replacement, we focus here on popular but poorly-understood heuristics, which involve going over random permutations of the individual functions. This setting has been investigated in several recent works, but the optimal error rates remain unclear. In this paper, we provide lower bounds on the expected optimization error with these heuristics (using SGD with any constant step size), which elucidate their advantages and disadvantages. In particular, we prove that after $k$ passes over $n$ individual functions, if the functions are re-shuffled after every pass, the best possible optimization error for SGD is at least $\Omega\left(1/(nk)^2+1/nk^3\right)$, which partially corresponds to recently derived upper bounds. Moreover, if the functions are only shuffled once, then the lower bound increases to $\Omega(1/nk^2)$. Since there are strictly smaller upper bounds for repeated reshuffling, this proves an inherent performance gap between SGD with single shuffling and repeated shuffling. As a more minor contribution, we also provide a non-asymptotic $\Omega(1/k^2)$ lower bound (independent of $n$) for the incremental gradient method, when no random shuffling takes place. Finally, we provide an indication that our lower bounds are tight, by proving matching upper bounds for univariate quadratic functions.
APA
Safran, I. & Shamir, O.. (2020). How Good is SGD with Random Shuffling?. Proceedings of Thirty Third Conference on Learning Theory, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 125:3250-3284 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v125/safran20a.html.

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