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Gradient Descent on Logistic Regression with Non-Separable Data and Large Step Sizes

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arxiv 2406.05033 v2 pith:SAVWVMXB submitted 2024-06-07 cs.LG math.OC

classification cs.LGmath.OC
keywords steplambdasizessizeconvergencecriticallargeless
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abstract

We study gradient descent (GD) dynamics on logistic regression problems with large, constant step sizes. For linearly-separable data, it is known that GD converges to the minimizer with arbitrarily large step sizes, a property which no longer holds when the problem is not separable. In fact, the behaviour can be much more complex -- a sequence of period-doubling bifurcations begins at the critical step size $2/\lambda$, where $\lambda$ is the largest eigenvalue of the Hessian at the solution. Using a smaller-than-critical step size guarantees convergence if initialized nearby the solution: but does this suffice globally? In one dimension, we show that a step size less than $1/\lambda$ suffices for global convergence. However, for all step sizes between $1/\lambda$ and the critical step size $2/\lambda$, one can construct a dataset such that GD converges to a stable cycle. In higher dimensions, this is actually possible even for step sizes less than $1/\lambda$. Our results show that although local convergence is guaranteed for all step sizes less than the critical step size, global convergence is not, and GD may instead converge to a cycle depending on the initialization.

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Cited by 4 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Non-asymptotic implicit bias of logistic regression at early-stage gradient descent dynamics

    cs.LG 2026-08 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    A finite-time proof shows gradient descent on separable logistic regression reaches a constant-level alignment with the max-margin direction in O(exp(exp(-δ))) iterations, tight up to constants.

  2. Implicit Bias of SGD in Multivariate ReLU Networks: Effective Width Collapse

    cs.LG 2026-07 accept novelty 7.0 of 10

    Noisy SGD in the mean-field regime forces wide multivariate ReLU networks to an effective width of at most 2P-1, yielding a continuous piecewise-affine predictor whose hyperplanes are non-redundant with respect to the...

  3. Adaptive control mechanisms in gradient descent algorithms

    math.OC 2025-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A feedback-feedforward adaptive stepsize law for gradient descent is shown via Lyapunov analysis to achieve O(1/k) last-iterate convergence for convex locally smooth objectives with robustness to inexact gradients.

  4. Gradient Descent on Logistic Regression: Do Large Step-Sizes Work with Data on the Sphere?

    cs.LG 2025-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    On the unit sphere, gradient descent for logistic regression converges globally for every step size below the stability threshold only in one dimension; in higher dimensions, cycles persist despite the equal-norm restriction.

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