Gradient Descent

Last Updated: 2021-11-19

Gradient Descent vs Stochastic Gradient Descent

• Gradient Descent (or Batch Gradient Descent): compute the cost gradient based on the complete training set. Can be costly for large datasets, and take longer to converge.
• Stochastic Gradient Descent (or Online Gradient Descent): update the weights after each single training sample, or mini-batches(hundreds or thousands) of training samples. Originally named ADALINE.

Use Cases

• fits logistic regression: loss=log
• fits (linear) support vector machines: loss=hinge soft-margin
• combined with the "back propagation" algorithm: the de facto standard algorithm for training (shallow) neural networks.

Other algorithms

• conjugate gradient
• BFGS
• L-BFGS
• Limited-memory BFGS (L-BFGS or LM-BFGS)
• MLE
• least mean squares (LMS) adaptive filter