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Using Empirical Covariance Matrix in Enhancing Prediction Accuracy of Linear Models with Missing Information

Inference and Estimation in Missing Information (MI) scenarios are important topics in Statistical Learning Theory and Machine Learning (ML). In ML literature, attempts have been made to enhance prediction through precise feature selection methods. In sparse linear models, LASSO is well-known in extracting the desired support of the signal and resisting against noisy systems. When sparse models are also suffering from MI, the sparse recovery and inference of the missing models are taken into account simultaneously. In this paper, we will introduce an approach which enjoys sparse regression and covariance matrix estimation to improve matrix completion accuracy, and as a result enhancing feature selection preciseness which leads to reduction in prediction Mean Squared Error (MSE). We will compare the effect of employing covariance matrix in enhancing estimation accuracy to the case it is not used in feature selection. Simulations show the improvement in the performance as compared to the case where the covariance matrix estimation is not used.

Sparse Embedded $k$-Means Clustering

The $k$-means clustering algorithm is a ubiquitous tool in data mining and machine learning that shows promising performance. However, its high computational cost has hindered its applications in broad domains. Researchers have successfully addressed these obstacles with dimensionality reduction methods. Recently, [1] develop a state-of-the-art random projection (RP) method for faster $k$-means clustering. Their method delivers many improvements over other dimensionality reduction methods. For example, compared to the advanced singular value decomposition based feature extraction approach, [1] reduce the running time by a factor of $\min \{n,d\}\epsilon^2 log(d)/k$ for data matrix $X \in \mathbb{R}^{n\times d}$ with $n$ data points and $d$ features, while losing only a factor of one in approximation accuracy. Unfortunately, they still require $\mathcal{O}(\frac{ndk}{\epsilon^2log(d)})$ for matrix multiplication and this cost will be prohibitive for large values of $n$ and $d$. To break this bottleneck, we carefully build a sparse embedded $k$-means clustering algorithm which requires $\mathcal{O}(nnz(X))$ ($nnz(X)$ denotes the number of non-zeros in $X$) for fast matrix multiplication. Moreover, our proposed algorithm improves on [1]'s results for approximation accuracy by a factor of one. Our empirical studies corroborate our theoretical findings, and demonstrate that our approach is able to significantly accelerate $k$-means clustering, while achieving satisfactory clustering performance.

Joint estimation of sparse multivariate regression and conditional graphical models

Multivariate regression model is a natural generalization of the classical univari- ate regression model for fitting multiple responses. In this paper, we propose a high- dimensional multivariate conditional regression model for constructing sparse estimates of the multivariate regression coefficient matrix that accounts for the dependency struc- ture among the multiple responses. The proposed method decomposes the multivariate regression problem into a series of penalized conditional log-likelihood of each response conditioned on the covariates and other responses. It allows simultaneous estimation of the sparse regression coefficient matrix and the sparse inverse covariance matrix. The asymptotic selection consistency and normality are established for the diverging dimension of the covariates and number of responses. The effectiveness of the pro- posed method is also demonstrated in a variety of simulated examples as well as an application to the Glioblastoma multiforme cancer data.

Empirical Bayes Matrix Completion

We develop an empirical Bayes (EB) algorithm for the matrix completion problems. The EB algorithm is motivated from the singular value shrinkage estimator for matrix means by Efron and Morris (1972). Since the EB algorithm is essentially the EM algorithm applied to a simple model, it does not require heuristic parameter tuning other than tolerance. Numerical results demonstrated that the EB algorithm achieves a good trade-off between accuracy and efficiency compared to existing algorithms and that it works particularly well when the difference between the number of rows and columns is large. Application to real data also shows the practical utility of the EB algorithm.

SONIA: A Symmetric Blockwise Truncated Optimization Algorithm

This work presents a new algorithm for empirical risk minimization. The algorithm bridges the gap between first- and second-order methods by computing a search direction that uses a second-order-type update in one subspace, coupled with a scaled steepest descent step in the orthogonal complement. To this end, partial curvature information is incorporated to help with ill-conditioning, while simultaneously allowing the algorithm to scale to the large problem dimensions often encountered in machine learning applications. Theoretical results are presented to confirm that the algorithm converges to a stationary point in both the strongly convex and nonconvex cases. A stochastic variant of the algorithm is also presented, along with corresponding theoretical guarantees. Numerical results confirm the strengths of the new approach on standard machine learning problems.