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14,202
Reservoir computing approaches for representation and classification of multivariate time series
cs.NE
Classification of multivariate time series (MTS) has been tackled with a large variety of methodologies and applied to a wide range of scenarios. Among the existing approaches, reservoir computing (RC) techniques, which implement a fixed and high-dimensional recurrent network to process sequential data, are computation...
computer science
14,203
Mixed membership stochastic blockmodels
stat.ME
Observations consisting of measurements on relationships for pairs of objects arise in many settings, such as protein interaction and gene regulatory networks, collections of author-recipient email, and social networks. Analyzing such data with probabilisic models can be delicate because the simple exchangeability assu...
computer science
14,204
On Universal Prediction and Bayesian Confirmation
math.ST
The Bayesian framework is a well-studied and successful framework for inductive reasoning, which includes hypothesis testing and confirmation, parameter estimation, sequence prediction, classification, and regression. But standard statistical guidelines for choosing the model class and prior are not always available or...
computer science
14,205
Catching Up Faster by Switching Sooner: A Prequential Solution to the AIC-BIC Dilemma
math.ST
Bayesian model averaging, model selection and its approximations such as BIC are generally statistically consistent, but sometimes achieve slower rates og convergence than other methods such as AIC and leave-one-out cross-validation. On the other hand, these other methods can br inconsistent. We identify the "catch-up ...
computer science
14,206
Active Learning for Hidden Attributes in Networks
stat.ML
In many networks, vertices have hidden attributes, or types, that are correlated with the networks topology. If the topology is known but these attributes are not, and if learning the attributes is costly, we need a method for choosing which vertex to query in order to learn as much as possible about the attributes of ...
computer science
14,207
Information Theoretic Limits on Learning Stochastic Differential Equations
cs.IT
Consider the problem of learning the drift coefficient of a stochastic differential equation from a sample path. In this paper, we assume that the drift is parametrized by a high dimensional vector. We address the question of how long the system needs to be observed in order to learn this vector of parameters. We prove...
computer science
14,208
One Permutation Hashing for Efficient Search and Learning
cs.LG
Recently, the method of b-bit minwise hashing has been applied to large-scale linear learning and sublinear time near-neighbor search. The major drawback of minwise hashing is the expensive preprocessing cost, as the method requires applying (e.g.,) k=200 to 500 permutations on the data. The testing time can also be ex...
computer science
14,209
Robust subspace clustering
cs.LG
Subspace clustering refers to the task of finding a multi-subspace representation that best fits a collection of points taken from a high-dimensional space. This paper introduces an algorithm inspired by sparse subspace clustering (SSC) [In IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, CVPR (2009) 2790-27...
computer science
14,210
Robust High Dimensional Sparse Regression and Matching Pursuit
stat.ML
We consider high dimensional sparse regression, and develop strategies able to deal with arbitrary -- possibly, severe or coordinated -- errors in the covariance matrix $X$. These may come from corrupted data, persistent experimental errors, or malicious respondents in surveys/recommender systems, etc. Such non-stochas...
computer science
14,211
Sparse Signal Processing with Linear and Nonlinear Observations: A Unified Shannon-Theoretic Approach
cs.IT
We derive fundamental sample complexity bounds for recovering sparse and structured signals for linear and nonlinear observation models including sparse regression, group testing, multivariate regression and problems with missing features. In general, sparse signal processing problems can be characterized in terms of t...
computer science
14,212
Precisely Verifying the Null Space Conditions in Compressed Sensing: A Sandwiching Algorithm
cs.IT
In this paper, we propose new efficient algorithms to verify the null space condition in compressed sensing (CS). Given an $(n-m) \times n$ ($m>0$) CS matrix $A$ and a positive $k$, we are interested in computing $\displaystyle \alpha_k = \max_{\{z: Az=0,z\neq 0\}}\max_{\{K: |K|\leq k\}}$ ${\|z_K \|_{1}}{\|z\|_{1}}$, w...
computer science
14,213
Rare-Allele Detection Using Compressed Se(que)nsing
cs.IT
Detection of rare variants by resequencing is important for the identification of individuals carrying disease variants. Rapid sequencing by new technologies enables low-cost resequencing of target regions, although it is still prohibitive to test more than a few individuals. In order to improve cost trade-offs, it has...
computer science
14,214
Discrete MDL Predicts in Total Variation
math.PR
The Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle selects the model that has the shortest code for data plus model. We show that for a countable class of models, MDL predictions are close to the true distribution in a strong sense. The result is completely general. No independence, ergodicity, stationarity, identifiabilit...
computer science
14,215
From Small-World Networks to Comparison-Based Search
cs.LG
The problem of content search through comparisons has recently received considerable attention. In short, a user searching for a target object navigates through a database in the following manner: the user is asked to select the object most similar to her target from a small list of objects. A new object list is then p...
computer science
14,216
Predicting protein contact map using evolutionary and physical constraints by integer programming (extended version)
cs.CE
Motivation. Protein contact map describes the pairwise spatial and functional relationship of residues in a protein and contains key information for protein 3D structure prediction. Although studied extensively, it remains very challenging to predict contact map using only sequence information. Most existing methods pr...
computer science
14,217
When are Overcomplete Topic Models Identifiable? Uniqueness of Tensor Tucker Decompositions with Structured Sparsity
cs.LG
Overcomplete latent representations have been very popular for unsupervised feature learning in recent years. In this paper, we specify which overcomplete models can be identified given observable moments of a certain order. We consider probabilistic admixture or topic models in the overcomplete regime, where the numbe...
computer science
14,218
On the Decreasing Power of Kernel and Distance based Nonparametric Hypothesis Tests in High Dimensions
stat.ML
This paper is about two related decision theoretic problems, nonparametric two-sample testing and independence testing. There is a belief that two recently proposed solutions, based on kernels and distances between pairs of points, behave well in high-dimensional settings. We identify different sources of misconception...
computer science
14,219
Active Learning for Node Classification in Assortative and Disassortative Networks
cs.IT
In many real-world networks, nodes have class labels, attributes, or variables that affect the network's topology. If the topology of the network is known but the labels of the nodes are hidden, we would like to select a small subset of nodes such that, if we knew their labels, we could accurately predict the labels of...
computer science
14,220
Risk estimation for matrix recovery with spectral regularization
math.OC
In this paper, we develop an approach to recursively estimate the quadratic risk for matrix recovery problems regularized with spectral functions. Toward this end, in the spirit of the SURE theory, a key step is to compute the (weak) derivative and divergence of a solution with respect to the observations. As such a so...
computer science
14,221
Pseudo-likelihood methods for community detection in large sparse networks
cs.SI
Many algorithms have been proposed for fitting network models with communities, but most of them do not scale well to large networks, and often fail on sparse networks. Here we propose a new fast pseudo-likelihood method for fitting the stochastic block model for networks, as well as a variant that allows for an arbitr...
computer science
14,222
State estimation under non-Gaussian Levy noise: A modified Kalman filtering method
math.DS
The Kalman filter is extensively used for state estimation for linear systems under Gaussian noise. When non-Gaussian L\'evy noise is present, the conventional Kalman filter may fail to be effective due to the fact that the non-Gaussian L\'evy noise may have infinite variance. A modified Kalman filter for linear system...
computer science
14,223
Subspace Clustering via Thresholding and Spectral Clustering
cs.IT
We consider the problem of clustering a set of high-dimensional data points into sets of low-dimensional linear subspaces. The number of subspaces, their dimensions, and their orientations are unknown. We propose a simple and low-complexity clustering algorithm based on thresholding the correlations between the data po...
computer science
14,224
Network Detection Theory and Performance
cs.SI
Network detection is an important capability in many areas of applied research in which data can be represented as a graph of entities and relationships. Oftentimes the object of interest is a relatively small subgraph in an enormous, potentially uninteresting background. This aspect characterizes network detection as ...
computer science
14,225
Bayesian Structural Inference for Hidden Processes
stat.ML
We introduce a Bayesian approach to discovering patterns in structurally complex processes. The proposed method of Bayesian Structural Inference (BSI) relies on a set of candidate unifilar HMM (uHMM) topologies for inference of process structure from a data series. We employ a recently developed exact enumeration of to...
computer science
14,226
Equitability, interval estimation, and statistical power
math.ST
For analysis of a high-dimensional dataset, a common approach is to test a null hypothesis of statistical independence on all variable pairs using a non-parametric measure of dependence. However, because this approach attempts to identify any non-trivial relationship no matter how weak, it often identifies too many rel...
computer science
14,227
Measuring dependence powerfully and equitably
stat.ME
Given a high-dimensional data set we often wish to find the strongest relationships within it. A common strategy is to evaluate a measure of dependence on every variable pair and retain the highest-scoring pairs for follow-up. This strategy works well if the statistic used is equitable [Reshef et al. 2015a], i.e., if, ...
computer science
14,228
An Empirical Study of Leading Measures of Dependence
stat.ME
In exploratory data analysis, we are often interested in identifying promising pairwise associations for further analysis while filtering out weaker, less interesting ones. This can be accomplished by computing a measure of dependence on all variable pairs and examining the highest-scoring pairs, provided the measure o...
computer science
14,229
Should we really use post-hoc tests based on mean-ranks?
cs.LG
The statistical comparison of multiple algorithms over multiple data sets is fundamental in machine learning. This is typically carried out by the Friedman test. When the Friedman test rejects the null hypothesis, multiple comparisons are carried out to establish which are the significant differences among algorithms. ...
computer science
14,230
On the tightness of an SDP relaxation of k-means
cs.IT
Recently, Awasthi et al. introduced an SDP relaxation of the $k$-means problem in $\mathbb R^m$. In this work, we consider a random model for the data points in which $k$ balls of unit radius are deterministically distributed throughout $\mathbb R^m$, and then in each ball, $n$ points are drawn according to a common ro...
computer science
14,231
Solving Random Quadratic Systems of Equations Is Nearly as Easy as Solving Linear Systems
cs.IT
We consider the fundamental problem of solving quadratic systems of equations in $n$ variables, where $y_i = |\langle \boldsymbol{a}_i, \boldsymbol{x} \rangle|^2$, $i = 1, \ldots, m$ and $\boldsymbol{x} \in \mathbb{R}^n$ is unknown. We propose a novel method, which starting with an initial guess computed by means of a ...
computer science
14,232
Low-Rank Matrix Recovery from Row-and-Column Affine Measurements
cs.LG
We propose and study a row-and-column affine measurement scheme for low-rank matrix recovery. Each measurement is a linear combination of elements in one row or one column of a matrix $X$. This setting arises naturally in applications from different domains. However, current algorithms developed for standard matrix rec...
computer science
14,233
On the Computational Complexity of High-Dimensional Bayesian Variable Selection
math.ST
We study the computational complexity of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for high-dimensional Bayesian linear regression under sparsity constraints. We first show that a Bayesian approach can achieve variable-selection consistency under relatively mild conditions on the design matrix. We then demonstrate that t...
computer science
14,234
Online Nonnegative Matrix Factorization with Outliers
stat.ML
We propose a unified and systematic framework for performing online nonnegative matrix factorization in the presence of outliers. Our framework is particularly suited to large-scale data. We propose two solvers based on projected gradient descent and the alternating direction method of multipliers. We prove that the se...
computer science
14,235
Robust Estimators in High Dimensions without the Computational Intractability
cs.DS
We study high-dimensional distribution learning in an agnostic setting where an adversary is allowed to arbitrarily corrupt an $\varepsilon$-fraction of the samples. Such questions have a rich history spanning statistics, machine learning and theoretical computer science. Even in the most basic settings, the only known...
computer science
14,236
Fully scalable online-preprocessing algorithm for short oligonucleotide microarray atlases
cs.CE
Accumulation of standardized data collections is opening up novel opportunities for holistic characterization of genome function. The limited scalability of current preprocessing techniques has, however, formed a bottleneck for full utilization of contemporary microarray collections. While short oligonucleotide arrays ...
computer science
14,237
Exact Sparse Recovery with L0 Projections
stat.ML
Many applications concern sparse signals, for example, detecting anomalies from the differences between consecutive images taken by surveillance cameras. This paper focuses on the problem of recovering a K-sparse signal x in N dimensions. In the mainstream framework of compressed sensing (CS), the vector x is recovered...
computer science
14,238
A consistent clustering-based approach to estimating the number of change-points in highly dependent time-series
stat.ML
The problem of change-point estimation is considered under a general framework where the data are generated by unknown stationary ergodic process distributions. In this context, the consistent estimation of the number of change-points is provably impossible. However, it is shown that a consistent clustering method may ...
computer science
14,239
Model Selection for High-Dimensional Regression under the Generalized Irrepresentability Condition
math.ST
In the high-dimensional regression model a response variable is linearly related to $p$ covariates, but the sample size $n$ is smaller than $p$. We assume that only a small subset of covariates is `active' (i.e., the corresponding coefficients are non-zero), and consider the model-selection problem of identifying the a...
computer science
14,240
Noisy Subspace Clustering via Thresholding
cs.IT
We consider the problem of clustering noisy high-dimensional data points into a union of low-dimensional subspaces and a set of outliers. The number of subspaces, their dimensions, and their orientations are unknown. A probabilistic performance analysis of the thresholding-based subspace clustering (TSC) algorithm intr...
computer science
14,241
On model selection consistency of regularized M-estimators
math.ST
Regularized M-estimators are used in diverse areas of science and engineering to fit high-dimensional models with some low-dimensional structure. Usually the low-dimensional structure is encoded by the presence of the (unknown) parameters in some low-dimensional model subspace. In such settings, it is desirable for est...
computer science
14,242
Computing Entropy Rate Of Symbol Sources & A Distribution-free Limit Theorem
cs.IT
Entropy rate of sequential data-streams naturally quantifies the complexity of the generative process. Thus entropy rate fluctuations could be used as a tool to recognize dynamical perturbations in signal sources, and could potentially be carried out without explicit background noise characterization. However, state of...
computer science
14,243
Dual-to-kernel learning with ideals
stat.ML
In this paper, we propose a theory which unifies kernel learning and symbolic algebraic methods. We show that both worlds are inherently dual to each other, and we use this duality to combine the structure-awareness of algebraic methods with the efficiency and generality of kernels. The main idea lies in relating polyn...
computer science
14,244
Phase transitions and sample complexity in Bayes-optimal matrix factorization
cs.NA
We analyse the matrix factorization problem. Given a noisy measurement of a product of two matrices, the problem is to estimate back the original matrices. It arises in many applications such as dictionary learning, blind matrix calibration, sparse principal component analysis, blind source separation, low rank matrix ...
computer science
14,245
Probabilistic Interpretation of Linear Solvers
math.OC
This manuscript proposes a probabilistic framework for algorithms that iteratively solve unconstrained linear problems $Bx = b$ with positive definite $B$ for $x$. The goal is to replace the point estimates returned by existing methods with a Gaussian posterior belief over the elements of the inverse of $B$, which can ...
computer science
14,246
Matroid Regression
math.ST
We propose an algebraic combinatorial method for solving large sparse linear systems of equations locally - that is, a method which can compute single evaluations of the signal without computing the whole signal. The method scales only in the sparsity of the system and not in its size, and allows to provide error estim...
computer science
14,247
On the Impossibility of Learning the Missing Mass
stat.ML
This paper shows that one cannot learn the probability of rare events without imposing further structural assumptions. The event of interest is that of obtaining an outcome outside the coverage of an i.i.d. sample from a discrete distribution. The probability of this event is referred to as the "missing mass". The impo...
computer science
14,248
Decentralized learning for wireless communications and networking
math.OC
This chapter deals with decentralized learning algorithms for in-network processing of graph-valued data. A generic learning problem is formulated and recast into a separable form, which is iteratively minimized using the alternating-direction method of multipliers (ADMM) so as to gain the desired degree of paralleliza...
computer science
14,249
Square Hellinger Subadditivity for Bayesian Networks and its Applications to Identity Testing
cs.LG
We show that the square Hellinger distance between two Bayesian networks on the same directed graph, $G$, is subadditive with respect to the neighborhoods of $G$. Namely, if $P$ and $Q$ are the probability distributions defined by two Bayesian networks on the same DAG, our inequality states that the square Hellinger di...
computer science
14,250
Gradient Coding
stat.ML
We propose a novel coding theoretic framework for mitigating stragglers in distributed learning. We show how carefully replicating data blocks and coding across gradients can provide tolerance to failures and stragglers for Synchronous Gradient Descent. We implement our schemes in python (using MPI) to run on Amazon EC...
computer science
14,251
A geometric analysis of subspace clustering with outliers
cs.IT
This paper considers the problem of clustering a collection of unlabeled data points assumed to lie near a union of lower-dimensional planes. As is common in computer vision or unsupervised learning applications, we do not know in advance how many subspaces there are nor do we have any information about their dimension...
computer science
14,252
Exact and Stable Covariance Estimation from Quadratic Sampling via Convex Programming
cs.IT
Statistical inference and information processing of high-dimensional data often require efficient and accurate estimation of their second-order statistics. With rapidly changing data, limited processing power and storage at the acquisition devices, it is desirable to extract the covariance structure from a single pass ...
computer science
14,253
Hypothesis Testing for Automated Community Detection in Networks
stat.ML
Community detection in networks is a key exploratory tool with applications in a diverse set of areas, ranging from finding communities in social and biological networks to identifying link farms in the World Wide Web. The problem of finding communities or clusters in a network has received much attention from statisti...
computer science
14,254
Bayesian Discovery of Threat Networks
cs.SI
A novel unified Bayesian framework for network detection is developed, under which a detection algorithm is derived based on random walks on graphs. The algorithm detects threat networks using partial observations of their activity, and is proved to be optimum in the Neyman-Pearson sense. The algorithm is defined by a ...
computer science
14,255
Rapid and deterministic estimation of probability densities using scale-free field theories
cs.LG
The question of how best to estimate a continuous probability density from finite data is an intriguing open problem at the interface of statistics and physics. Previous work has argued that this problem can be addressed in a natural way using methods from statistical field theory. Here I describe new results that allo...
computer science
14,256
Probabilistic Group Testing under Sum Observations: A Parallelizable 2-Approximation for Entropy Loss
cs.IT
We consider the problem of group testing with sum observations and noiseless answers, in which we aim to locate multiple objects by querying the number of objects in each of a sequence of chosen sets. We study a probabilistic setting with entropy loss, in which we assume a joint Bayesian prior density on the locations ...
computer science
14,257
Scalable Parallel Factorizations of SDD Matrices and Efficient Sampling for Gaussian Graphical Models
cs.DS
Motivated by a sampling problem basic to computational statistical inference, we develop a nearly optimal algorithm for a fundamental problem in spectral graph theory and numerical analysis. Given an $n\times n$ SDDM matrix ${\bf \mathbf{M}}$, and a constant $-1 \leq p \leq 1$, our algorithm gives efficient access to a...
computer science
14,258
Fast Exact Matrix Completion with Finite Samples
cs.NA
Matrix completion is the problem of recovering a low rank matrix by observing a small fraction of its entries. A series of recent works [KOM12,JNS13,HW14] have proposed fast non-convex optimization based iterative algorithms to solve this problem. However, the sample complexity in all these results is sub-optimal in it...
computer science
14,259
Error Rate Bounds and Iterative Weighted Majority Voting for Crowdsourcing
stat.ML
Crowdsourcing has become an effective and popular tool for human-powered computation to label large datasets. Since the workers can be unreliable, it is common in crowdsourcing to assign multiple workers to one task, and to aggregate the labels in order to obtain results of high quality. In this paper, we provide finit...
computer science
14,260
Sequential Sensing with Model Mismatch
stat.ML
We characterize the performance of sequential information guided sensing, Info-Greedy Sensing, when there is a mismatch between the true signal model and the assumed model, which may be a sample estimate. In particular, we consider a setup where the signal is low-rank Gaussian and the measurements are taken in the dire...
computer science
14,261
Information Recovery from Pairwise Measurements
cs.IT
This paper is concerned with jointly recovering $n$ node-variables $\left\{ x_{i}\right\}_{1\leq i\leq n}$ from a collection of pairwise difference measurements. Imagine we acquire a few observations taking the form of $x_{i}-x_{j}$; the observation pattern is represented by a measurement graph $\mathcal{G}$ with an ed...
computer science
14,262
Testing Closeness With Unequal Sized Samples
cs.LG
We consider the problem of closeness testing for two discrete distributions in the practically relevant setting of \emph{unequal} sized samples drawn from each of them. Specifically, given a target error parameter $\varepsilon > 0$, $m_1$ independent draws from an unknown distribution $p,$ and $m_2$ draws from an unkno...
computer science
14,263
Spectral MLE: Top-$K$ Rank Aggregation from Pairwise Comparisons
cs.LG
This paper explores the preference-based top-$K$ rank aggregation problem. Suppose that a collection of items is repeatedly compared in pairs, and one wishes to recover a consistent ordering that emphasizes the top-$K$ ranked items, based on partially revealed preferences. We focus on the Bradley-Terry-Luce (BTL) model...
computer science
14,264
Optimal change point detection in Gaussian processes
math.ST
We study the problem of detecting a change in the mean of one-dimensional Gaussian process data. This problem is investigated in the setting of increasing domain (customarily employed in time series analysis) and in the setting of fixed domain (typically arising in spatial data analysis). We propose a detection method ...
computer science
14,265
Completing Low-Rank Matrices with Corrupted Samples from Few Coefficients in General Basis
cs.IT
Subspace recovery from corrupted and missing data is crucial for various applications in signal processing and information theory. To complete missing values and detect column corruptions, existing robust Matrix Completion (MC) methods mostly concentrate on recovering a low-rank matrix from few corrupted coefficients w...
computer science
14,266
Sum-of-Squares Lower Bounds for Sparse PCA
cs.LG
This paper establishes a statistical versus computational trade-off for solving a basic high-dimensional machine learning problem via a basic convex relaxation method. Specifically, we consider the {\em Sparse Principal Component Analysis} (Sparse PCA) problem, and the family of {\em Sum-of-Squares} (SoS, aka Lasserre/...
computer science
14,267
Estimating an Activity Driven Hidden Markov Model
stat.ML
We define a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) in which each hidden state has time-dependent $\textit{activity levels}$ that drive transitions and emissions, and show how to estimate its parameters. Our construction is motivated by the problem of inferring human mobility on sub-daily time scales from, for example, mobile phone ...
computer science
14,268
Dropping Convexity for Faster Semi-definite Optimization
stat.ML
We study the minimization of a convex function $f(X)$ over the set of $n\times n$ positive semi-definite matrices, but when the problem is recast as $\min_U g(U) := f(UU^\top)$, with $U \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times r}$ and $r \leq n$. We study the performance of gradient descent on $g$---which we refer to as Factored Gradi...
computer science
14,269
How Robust are Reconstruction Thresholds for Community Detection?
cs.DS
The stochastic block model is one of the oldest and most ubiquitous models for studying clustering and community detection. In an exciting sequence of developments, motivated by deep but non-rigorous ideas from statistical physics, Decelle et al. conjectured a sharp threshold for when community detection is possible in...
computer science
14,270
Sparse Recovery via Partial Regularization: Models, Theory and Algorithms
math.OC
In the context of sparse recovery, it is known that most of existing regularizers such as $\ell_1$ suffer from some bias incurred by some leading entries (in magnitude) of the associated vector. To neutralize this bias, we propose a class of models with partial regularizers for recovering a sparse solution of a linear ...
computer science
14,271
Infomax strategies for an optimal balance between exploration and exploitation
cs.LG
Proper balance between exploitation and exploration is what makes good decisions, which achieve high rewards like payoff or evolutionary fitness. The Infomax principle postulates that maximization of information directs the function of diverse systems, from living systems to artificial neural networks. While specific a...
computer science
14,272
Recommender systems inspired by the structure of quantum theory
cs.LG
Physicists use quantum models to describe the behavior of physical systems. Quantum models owe their success to their interpretability, to their relation to probabilistic models (quantization of classical models) and to their high predictive power. Beyond physics, these properties are valuable in general data science. ...
computer science
14,273
Minimax Lower Bounds for Linear Independence Testing
stat.ML
Linear independence testing is a fundamental information-theoretic and statistical problem that can be posed as follows: given $n$ points $\{(X_i,Y_i)\}^n_{i=1}$ from a $p+q$ dimensional multivariate distribution where $X_i \in \mathbb{R}^p$ and $Y_i \in\mathbb{R}^q$, determine whether $a^T X$ and $b^T Y$ are uncorrela...
computer science
14,274
Kernels for sequentially ordered data
stat.ML
We present a novel framework for kernel learning with sequential data of any kind, such as time series, sequences of graphs, or strings. Our approach is based on signature features which can be seen as an ordered variant of sample (cross-)moments; it allows to obtain a "sequentialized" version of any static kernel. The...
computer science
14,275
Active Learning Algorithms for Graphical Model Selection
stat.ML
The problem of learning the structure of a high dimensional graphical model from data has received considerable attention in recent years. In many applications such as sensor networks and proteomics it is often expensive to obtain samples from all the variables involved simultaneously. For instance, this might involve ...
computer science
14,276
Clustering subgaussian mixtures by semidefinite programming
stat.ML
We introduce a model-free relax-and-round algorithm for k-means clustering based on a semidefinite relaxation due to Peng and Wei. The algorithm interprets the SDP output as a denoised version of the original data and then rounds this output to a hard clustering. We provide a generic method for proving performance guar...
computer science
14,277
High-Dimensional $L_2$Boosting: Rate of Convergence
stat.ML
Boosting is one of the most significant developments in machine learning. This paper studies the rate of convergence of $L_2$Boosting, which is tailored for regression, in a high-dimensional setting. Moreover, we introduce so-called \textquotedblleft post-Boosting\textquotedblright. This is a post-selection estimator w...
computer science
14,278
Online Rules for Control of False Discovery Rate and False Discovery Exceedance
math.ST
Multiple hypothesis testing is a core problem in statistical inference and arises in almost every scientific field. Given a set of null hypotheses $\mathcal{H}(n) = (H_1,\dotsc, H_n)$, Benjamini and Hochberg introduced the false discovery rate (FDR), which is the expected proportion of false positives among rejected nu...
computer science
14,279
Interaction Screening: Efficient and Sample-Optimal Learning of Ising Models
cs.LG
We consider the problem of learning the underlying graph of an unknown Ising model on p spins from a collection of i.i.d. samples generated from the model. We suggest a new estimator that is computationally efficient and requires a number of samples that is near-optimal with respect to previously established informatio...
computer science
14,280
Communication-Efficient Distributed Statistical Inference
stat.ML
We present a Communication-efficient Surrogate Likelihood (CSL) framework for solving distributed statistical inference problems. CSL provides a communication-efficient surrogate to the global likelihood that can be used for low-dimensional estimation, high-dimensional regularized estimation and Bayesian inference. For...
computer science
14,281
Fast Algorithms for Robust PCA via Gradient Descent
cs.IT
We consider the problem of Robust PCA in the fully and partially observed settings. Without corruptions, this is the well-known matrix completion problem. From a statistical standpoint this problem has been recently well-studied, and conditions on when recovery is possible (how many observations do we need, how many co...
computer science
14,282
Randomized block proximal damped Newton method for composite self-concordant minimization
math.OC
In this paper we consider the composite self-concordant (CSC) minimization problem, which minimizes the sum of a self-concordant function $f$ and a (possibly nonsmooth) proper closed convex function $g$. The CSC minimization is the cornerstone of the path-following interior point methods for solving a broad class of co...
computer science
14,283
Solving a Mixture of Many Random Linear Equations by Tensor Decomposition and Alternating Minimization
cs.LG
We consider the problem of solving mixed random linear equations with $k$ components. This is the noiseless setting of mixed linear regression. The goal is to estimate multiple linear models from mixed samples in the case where the labels (which sample corresponds to which model) are not observed. We give a tractable a...
computer science
14,284
Non-square matrix sensing without spurious local minima via the Burer-Monteiro approach
stat.ML
We consider the non-square matrix sensing problem, under restricted isometry property (RIP) assumptions. We focus on the non-convex formulation, where any rank-$r$ matrix $X \in \mathbb{R}^{m \times n}$ is represented as $UV^\top$, where $U \in \mathbb{R}^{m \times r}$ and $V \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times r}$. In this paper...
computer science
14,285
Finite-sample and asymptotic analysis of generalization ability with an application to penalized regression
stat.ML
In this paper, we study the performance of extremum estimators from the perspective of generalization ability (GA): the ability of a model to predict outcomes in new samples from the same population. By adapting the classical concentration inequalities, we derive upper bounds on the empirical out-of-sample prediction e...
computer science
14,286
Randomized Independent Component Analysis
stat.ML
Independent component analysis (ICA) is a method for recovering statistically independent signals from observations of unknown linear combinations of the sources. Some of the most accurate ICA decomposition methods require searching for the inverse transformation which minimizes different approximations of the Mutual I...
computer science
14,287
Phase Retrieval Meets Statistical Learning Theory: A Flexible Convex Relaxation
cs.IT
We propose a flexible convex relaxation for the phase retrieval problem that operates in the natural domain of the signal. Therefore, we avoid the prohibitive computational cost associated with "lifting" and semidefinite programming (SDP) in methods such as PhaseLift and compete with recently developed non-convex techn...
computer science
14,288
BET on Independence
math.ST
We study the problem of nonparametric dependence detection. Many existing methods suffer severe power loss due to non-uniform consistency, which we illustrate with a paradox. To avoid such power loss, we approach the nonparametric test of independence through the new framework of binary expansion statistics (BEStat) an...
computer science
14,289
Solving Equations of Random Convex Functions via Anchored Regression
cs.LG
We consider the question of estimating a solution to a system of equations that involve convex nonlinearities, a problem that is common in machine learning and signal processing. Because of these nonlinearities, conventional estimators based on empirical risk minimization generally involve solving a non-convex optimiza...
computer science
14,290
Bayesian Boolean Matrix Factorisation
stat.ML
Boolean matrix factorisation aims to decompose a binary data matrix into an approximate Boolean product of two low rank, binary matrices: one containing meaningful patterns, the other quantifying how the observations can be expressed as a combination of these patterns. We introduce the OrMachine, a probabilistic genera...
computer science
14,291
Structured signal recovery from quadratic measurements: Breaking sample complexity barriers via nonconvex optimization
cs.LG
This paper concerns the problem of recovering an unknown but structured signal $x \in R^n$ from $m$ quadratic measurements of the form $y_r=|<a_r,x>|^2$ for $r=1,2,...,m$. We focus on the under-determined setting where the number of measurements is significantly smaller than the dimension of the signal ($m<<n$). We for...
computer science
14,292
Exact tensor completion with sum-of-squares
cs.LG
We obtain the first polynomial-time algorithm for exact tensor completion that improves over the bound implied by reduction to matrix completion. The algorithm recovers an unknown 3-tensor with $r$ incoherent, orthogonal components in $\mathbb R^n$ from $r\cdot \tilde O(n^{1.5})$ randomly observed entries of the tensor...
computer science
14,293
Markov Chain Lifting and Distributed ADMM
stat.ML
The time to converge to the steady state of a finite Markov chain can be greatly reduced by a lifting operation, which creates a new Markov chain on an expanded state space. For a class of quadratic objectives, we show an analogous behavior where a distributed ADMM algorithm can be seen as a lifting of Gradient Descent...
computer science
14,294
Robustly Learning a Gaussian: Getting Optimal Error, Efficiently
cs.DS
We study the fundamental problem of learning the parameters of a high-dimensional Gaussian in the presence of noise -- where an $\varepsilon$-fraction of our samples were chosen by an adversary. We give robust estimators that achieve estimation error $O(\varepsilon)$ in the total variation distance, which is optimal up...
computer science
14,295
On the Gap Between Strict-Saddles and True Convexity: An Omega(log d) Lower Bound for Eigenvector Approximation
cs.LG
We prove a \emph{query complexity} lower bound on rank-one principal component analysis (PCA). We consider an oracle model where, given a symmetric matrix $M \in \mathbb{R}^{d \times d}$, an algorithm is allowed to make $T$ \emph{exact} queries of the form $w^{(i)} = Mv^{(i)}$ for $i \in \{1,\dots,T\}$, where $v^{(i)}$...
computer science
14,296
A Flexible Framework for Hypothesis Testing in High-dimensions
math.ST
Hypothesis testing in the linear regression model is a fundamental statistical problem. We consider linear regression in the high-dimensional regime where the number of parameters exceeds the number of samples ($p> n$) and assume that the high-dimensional parameters vector is $s_0$ sparse. We develop a general and flex...
computer science
14,297
Hypothesis Testing For Densities and High-Dimensional Multinomials: Sharp Local Minimax Rates
math.ST
We consider the goodness-of-fit testing problem of distinguishing whether the data are drawn from a specified distribution, versus a composite alternative separated from the null in the total variation metric. In the discrete case, we consider goodness-of-fit testing when the null distribution has a possibly growing or...
computer science
14,298
Generalization Properties of Doubly Stochastic Learning Algorithms
stat.ML
Doubly stochastic learning algorithms are scalable kernel methods that perform very well in practice. However, their generalization properties are not well understood and their analysis is challenging since the corresponding learning sequence may not be in the hypothesis space induced by the kernel. In this paper, we p...
computer science
14,299
Spectral Method and Regularized MLE Are Both Optimal for Top-$K$ Ranking
stat.ML
This paper is concerned with the problem of top-$K$ ranking from pairwise comparisons. Given a collection of $n$ items and a few pairwise binary comparisons across them, one wishes to identify the set of $K$ items that receive the highest ranks. To tackle this problem, we adopt the logistic parametric model---the Bradl...
computer science
14,300
Universal Function Approximation by Deep Neural Nets with Bounded Width and ReLU Activations
stat.ML
This article concerns the expressive power of depth in neural nets with ReLU activations and bounded width. We are particularly interested in the following questions: what is the minimal width $w_{\text{min}}(d)$ so that ReLU nets of width $w_{\text{min}}(d)$ (and arbitrary depth) can approximate any continuous functio...
computer science
14,301
Hypotheses testing on infinite random graphs
cs.LG
Drawing on some recent results that provide the formalism necessary to definite stationarity for infinite random graphs, this paper initiates the study of statistical and learning questions pertaining to these objects. Specifically, a criterion for the existence of a consistent test for complex hypotheses is presented,...
computer science