Computation and Applications of Euclidean and Normed Representations of Massive Data

Abstract

This thesis investigates Euclidean-space and $\ell_p$-norm representations of different forms of data, with a focus on efficient algorithms for computing these representations in settings where the amount of data is very large. The applications of such representations are also discussed: they may be used to summarize the data in a more compact form for downstream tasks while preserving its most salient properties; and further, they may also be used to extract insights about the data that may not be apparent in its original form. This thesis presents novel algorithms for computing Euclidean representations in the case where the data comes with linear structure, as well as in the case where the data comes only with metric, or distance structure. In addition, we give algorithms for computing $\ell_p$-norm representations in linear structured cases. The analyses of these algorithms use tools from geometry, probability, and optimization, and these tools are used to illuminate other algorithms for similar problems.