A Regression-Based Prediction-Correction Method for Stochastic Time-Varying Optimization Problems

Abstract

In many real-world applications, optimization problems evolve continuously over time and are often subject to stochastic noise. We consider a stochastic time-varying optimization problem in which the objective function $f(x;t)$ changes continuously and only noisy gradient observations are available. In deterministic settings, the prediction-correction method that exploits the time derivative of the solution is effective for accurately tracking the solution trajectory. However, a straightforward extension to stochastic problems requires an estimate of $\nabla_{xt} f(x;t)$ and the computation of a Hessian inverse at each step--requirements that are difficult or costly in practice. To address these issues, we propose a prediction-correction algorithm that uses a regression-based prediction step: the prediction is formed as a linear combination of recent iterates, which can be computed efficiently without estimating $\nabla_{xt}f(x;t)$ or computing Hessian inversions. We prove a tracking-error bound for the proposed method under standard smoothness and stochastic assumptions. Numerical experiments show that the regression-based prediction improves tracking accuracy while reducing computational cost compared with existing methods.