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We introduce a geometrically transparent strict saddle property for nonsmooth functions. This property guarantees that simple proximal algorithms on weakly convex problems converge only to local minimizers, when randomly initialized. We argue that the strict saddle property may be a realistic assumption in applications, since it provably holds for generic semi-algebraic optimization problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the problems of minimizing the sum of a continuously differentiable convex function and a nonsmooth convex function in this paper. These problems arise in many applications of practical interest. A class of alternating linearization methods is presented for solving these problems. The global convergence rate is also obtained under certain mild conditions. Numerical experiments validate the theoretical convergence analysis and verify the implementation of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]