Alphabeta Math
LemmaStatement: Literature-sourcedProof: AI-adaptedPipeline-generated
How statement and proof provenance work

The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.

  • Literature-sourced: the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
  • AI-adapted: a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
  • AI-generated: a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.

These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.

Nonconvex SCAFFOLD query-point drift bound

Statement

Assume the Axiom of Choice. Let fi:Rd→R have β-Lipschitz gradients with β>0 and let f=N−1∑ifi be bounded below. Run Option II SCAFFOLD with 1≤S≤N uniformly sampled clients, K≥1 local steps, server scale ηg≥1, and fresh conditionally unbiased local stochastic gradients with within-client variance at most σ2. Initialize ci0=∇fi(x0) and c0=N−1∑ici0. Let η~=Kηlηg and let Er,Ξr−1 be the query-point drift and anchor-tracking errors in the SCAFFOLD analysis-trajectory definition. If 0<η~≤(S/N)2/324β, then Er≤72K2ηl2(E∥∇f(xr−1)∥22+β2Ξr−1)+96Kηl2σ2.

Facts & Assumptions

Given: The Option II local updates, anchor errors and stochastic-gradient assumptions in the Statement.

[F1]

SCAFFOLD with client and server control variates: a local update is yi,k=yi,k−1−ηl(gi(yi,k−1)−ci+c).

[F2]

SCAFFOLD trajectories, client drift, control lag and tracking error: Er averages squared displacements of local query points yi,k−1r from xr−1; Ξr−1 averages squared distances of stored anchors from xr−1.

[F3]

Option II controls track gradients at stored client anchors: each control ci is the mean full gradient at its stored anchors plus a residual whose second moment is at most σ2/K, and c=N−1∑ici.

[F4]

Relaxed inequalities for squared Euclidean norms and The Euclidean inner product ⟨x,y⟩=∑k<nxkyk on Rn: for a>0, ∥u+v∥22≤(1+a)∥u∥22+(1+a−1)∥v∥22; the squared norm of three vectors is at most three times the sum of their squared norms.

[F5]

Filtration and filtered probability space, Conditional expectation as an ae class, Basic algebra and order properties of conditional expectation, Taking out what is known, Expectation of a nonnegative or integrable random variable, and Linearity, monotonicity, and the modulus bound for expectation: conditional expectation is linear, preserves expectations and inequalities, and permits taking out integrable history-measurable factors. The centering and variance bounds used below are the oracle hypotheses in [A1], not consequences of these interfaces.

[A1]

The stochastic-gradient assumptions and gradient-consistent initialization in the Statement hold at every round and local query.

[A2]

Assume the Axiom of Choice. It is used only to invoke the published conditional-expectation-as-an-a.e.-class interface in [F5].

Proof

1.1F2F3F4F5A1givenalgebra

If K=1, all query points are at the round start, so Er=0. Suppose [given] K≥2, write x=xr−1, and define mi=K−1∑k∇fi(αi,kr−1), ei=ci−mi, ai=mi−∇fi(x), and their client means aˉ=N−1∑iai, eˉ=N−1∑iei. The corrected control vector in client i's local update is vi=c−ci+∇fi(x)=∇f(x)+aˉ−ai+eˉ−ei. For each realization, N−1∑i∥aˉ−ai∥22≤N−1∑i∥ai∥22; the same holds for ei. Lipschitzness and Jensen give N−1∑iE∥ai∥22≤β2Ξr−1, and [F3] gives N−1∑iE∥ei∥22≤σ2/K. Apply the three-vector bound [F4] to obtain 1N∑iE∥vi∥22≤3(E∥∇f(x)∥22+β2Ξr−1+σ2K).

1.2F1F2F4F5step 1.1A1A2givenalgebra

Put di,k=yi,kr−x. Define [given] Ti(y)=y−ηl(∇fi(y)−∇fi(x)) and ξi,k=gi(yi,k−1r)−∇fi(yi,k−1r). The update is di,k=Ti(yi,k−1r)−x−ηlvi−ηlξi,k, and ∥Ti(yi,k−1r)−x∥2≤(1+ηlβ)∥di,k−1∥2. Conditional centering of ξi,k removes its cross term with the pre-draw vector. Use [F4] with a=1/(K−1) to get E∥di,k∥22≤q E∥di,k−1∥22+Kηl2E∥vi∥22+ηl2σ2,q=(1+1K−1)(1+ηlβ)2. The step bound implies ηlβ≤1/(24K). For K≥2, 1+1/(K−1)≤1+2/K and (1+1/(24K))2≤1+1/(10K), hence q≤1+3/K. Therefore ∑j=0K−1qj≤K(1+3/K)K≤Ke3<24K. Unrolling from di,0=0 and averaging the query points gives Er≤24K2ηl21N∑iE∥vi∥22+24Kηl2σ2.

2.1F2step 1.1step 1.2algebra∎

Substitute the control-vector bound from step 1.1 into step 1.2. [given] Collecting the gradient, anchor-tracking and oracle-variance terms gives Er≤72K2ηl2(E∥∇f(xr−1)∥22+β2Ξr−1)+96Kηl2σ2, which is the Statement.

Depends on

Used by

Dependency tree · two levels

46 results within two dependency steps of this one, each drawn at its shortest distance from it. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, so the chart reads left to right and ends at this result, which carries a heavier outline. Every node is a link to that result. Click elsewhere on the chart to enlarge it.

Sources