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arXiv · 1512.00677

On concentration for (regularized) empirical risk minimization

Sara van de Geer·Martin Wainwright
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Abstract

Rates of convergence for empirical risk minimizers have been well studied in the literature. In this paper, we aim to provide a complementary set of results, in particular by showing that after normalization, the risk of the empirical minimizer concentrates on a single point. Such results have been established by~\cite{chatterjee2014new} for constrained estimators in the normal sequence model. We first generalize and sharpen this result to regularized least squares with convex penalties, making use of a "direct" argument based on Borell's theorem. We then study generalizations to other loss functions, including the negative log-likelihood for exponential families combined with a strictly convex regularization penalty. The results in this general setting are based on more "indirect" arguments as well as on concentration inequalities for maxima of empirical processes.

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Sara van de Geer, Martin Wainwright. 2016-01-11. On concentration for (regularized) empirical risk minimization. https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.00677

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