What's the terminology for this alternative minimization algorithm?

Question

Say the model is $F(x_1)G(x_2)Z(x_3) = y \in \mathbb{R}^N$, with $F,G,Z$ explicitly known, we are given observation of $y$ as $y_b \in \mathbb{R}^N$ to find the value of $x_1$, $x_2$, $x_3$ for each sample. Clearly this is an underdetermined inverse problem.

I have seen some iterative algorithm like this,

1. start with random number of $x_1$, $x_2, x_3$.
2. choose $x_1$, keep $x_2$, $x_3$ constant as change $x_1$ to $x_1^*$ such that

$$F(x_1^*)G(x_2)Z(x_3) = y_b$$

3. update $x_1 = x_1^*$

4. same thing for $x_2$, but fix $x_1$, $x_3$, and update $x_2 = x_2^*$.

5. repeat for $x_3$, and do the whole process several iterations until it doesn't change

6. final result is taken as the solution to the inverse problem.

I have seen this philosophy many times across different areas of computer science, just hope to know what is the big picture behind it. like ADMM?

Answer 1

A general name for this approach is "Block Coordinate Descent." It's important to understand that convergence isn't guaranteed without additional hypotheses.

ADMM is not simply block coordinate descent- it's a more complicated method that is optimizing with respect to primal variables $x$ and $z$ in each iteration and then adjusting the Lagrange multiplier and penalty parameter.