The quadratic sandwich
Summary
A mathematical post introducing strong convexity and L-smoothness, showing how they bound a function from below and above by quadratic forms—the quadratic sandwich. It explains how the condition number L/μ affects gradient descent behavior, discusses spectral interpretation via Hessian eigenvalues, and offers a simple verification trick using convexity of modified functions. Includes intuitive examples and an appendix with a descent lemma proof.