  In deterministic optimization, line searches are a standard tool ensuring
stability and efficiency. Where only stochastic gradients are available, no
direct equivalent has so far been formulated, because uncertain gradients do
not allow for a strict sequence of decisions collapsing the search space. We
construct a probabilistic line search by combining the structure of existing
deterministic methods with notions from Bayesian optimization. Our method
retains a Gaussian process surrogate of the univariate optimization objective,
and uses a probabilistic belief over the Wolfe conditions to monitor the
descent. The algorithm has very low computational cost, and no user-controlled
parameters. Experiments show that it effectively removes the need to define a
learning rate for stochastic gradient descent.
