The use of the term "accelerator" is misleading as it's introduced during the physical metaphor. You should consider editing that sentence to clarify your meani

The use of the term "accelerator" is misleading as it's introduced during the physical metaphor. You should consider editing that sentence to clarify your meaning: The added inertia smooths out variation in velocity, dampening oscillations and causing us to barrel through narrow valleys, small humps and local minima. Keeping our speed steadier, we arrive at the global optimum faster. Note the alliteration :-) > momentum accelerates convergence Here it's more clear that momentum is accelerating convergence, not the "heavy ball" itself. > inertia acts both as a smoother and an accelerator On the second read, it's more clearly a contradiction. Speed can't be both held steadier and accelerated simultaneously. If you meant that momentum alternately smooths and accelerates, then it's even more strange. For that behavior, some sort of motor would be a more appropriate metaphor.