Paper:
We investigate statistical methods for automatically scheduling the learning rate (step size) in stochastic optimization. First, we consider a broad family of stochastic optimization methods with constant hyperparameters (including the learning rate and various forms of momentum) and derive a general necessary condition for the resulting dynamics to be stationary. Based on this condition, we develop a simple online statistical test to detect (non-)stationarity and use it to automatically drop the learning rate by a constant factor whenever stationarity is detected. Unlike in prior work, our stationarity condition and statistical test apply to different algorithms without modification. Finally, we propose a smoothed stochastic line-search method that can be used to warm up the optimization process before the statistical test can be applied effectively. This removes the expensive trial and error for setting a good initial learning rate. The combined method is highly autonomous and it attains state-of-the-art training and testing performance in our experiments on several deep learning tasks.

Review:
This paper proposes a new way of automatically scheduling the learning rate in stochastic optimization algorithms: Stochastic Approximation with Line-search and Statistical Adaptation (SALSA).
By first introducing a necessary condition for stationarity, the authors use this condition to make a simple statistical test for non-stationarity. Using this test, the authors propose the following strategy for the learning rate schedule in stochastic optimization problems:
(1) They first apply a new Line-Search algorithm (Smoothed Stochastic Line-Search - SSLS) to increase a small initial learning rate until the process becomes stationary according to their statistical test. At this stage, the learning rate is assumed to be optimally initialized for the objective function considered.
(2) The second step is to decrease the learning rate gradually every time the process is stationary again. For this, the authors derived their own version of a Statistical Adaptive Stochastic Approximation algorithm called SASA+ based on their statistical test.
The resulting strategy benefits from being simpler than previous statistical tests while being equally effective empirically.
The authors empirically demonstrated that their new learning rate scheduling mechanism achieves comparable, if not better, accuracy on two image classification tasks with ResNet-18 neural networks. It is important to note that the compared baselines got their parameters slightly fine-tuned, while (according to the authors) the proposed approach was not fine-tuned, and only the default parameters were used. This shows the robustness of the proposed approach against its various parameter settings.
I would accept this submission because the authors propose a new learning rate scheduling mechanism that seems to perform well empirically while being robust against its different initial parameter settings (including the choice of the initial learning rate).
This paper has several novelties: first, it proposes a simpler, yet as effective as previous approaches, Statistical Adaptive Stochastic Approximation (SASA) algorithm based on a new statistical test for non-stationarity. Second, it manages to relax the dependence of SASA algorithms on their optimal initial learning rate by introducing a Smoothed Stochastic Line Search (SSLS) algorithm that is responsible for finding such an optimal initial learning rate. Combined together, these two sub-routine provide a robust mechanism to schedule the learning rate in stochastic optimization problems.
One improvement I could suggest to better motivate the proposed approach is to experiment it not only on Convolutional-based networks with image classification tasks but also on Recurrent-based networks with text datasets. For instance, keeping the ImageNet experiments, the CIFAR-10 experiments could be replaced by an NLP task. This would show that the proposed approach is robust to different types of deep learning problems.
Overall I found the paper well written, and relatively easy to follow, even for non-theoretical practitioners. A few details listed below could improve even more the quality of this paper:
- At the top of page 2, the last sentence of the top paragraph ("However, these learning rate schedules are insufficient ...") requires a citation.
- In Figure 5: it is a little confusing to have the SASA+(NAG) algorithm in both rows: once in the top row, twice in the bottom row. The difference between the two SASA+(NAG) in the bottom row is well explained, but is there any difference between SASA+(NAG) in the top row and the ones in the bottom row?
- In Figure 5 - bottom row, left graph: if all lines are SASA+ algorithm, the legend should be consistent: either add "sasa+" to all lines or remove it from all lines.
- On page 9, ImageNet paragraph: a small typo: "On the other hand, both both SASA+ and SALSA...".