arXiv subjects

Chengzhu Huang

Publications and source records attributed to Chengzhu Huang.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

From Good Starts to Optimal Inference: Generalized Latent Factor Models with Missingness and Implicit Regularization

Generalized latent factor models provide a flexible framework for analyzing high-dimensional non-Gaussian data, but principled estimation and uncertainty quantification under missingness remain substantially less developed. We develop a theory that connects a computationally tractable nonconvex procedure directly to statistical inference for nonlinear latent factor models with exponential-family links and partially observed entries. Our procedure combines a link-aware double-SVD initialization, a unilateral refinement that achieves rowwise consistency, and vanilla gradient descent. We show that the refined initializer enters a region of incoherence and contraction and that gradient descent remains in this region through implicit regularization, contracting rapidly down to the statistical estimation error without explicit incoherence or balancing regularization. Our central result is a uniform rowwise linear approximation for the actual output of gradient descent that isolates the leading score fluctuations from higher-order estimation and optimization errors. These expansions yield asymptotically valid individual and Gaussian multiplier-bootstrap simultaneous inference for latent factors, together with simultaneous confidence bands for missing-entry means, without requiring an additional debiasing step. The resulting estimation rate matches a restricted-class minimax lower bound up to logarithmic factors, while the theory accommodates severe missingness, weak low-rank signals, and diminishing local curvature. Simulations support the theoretical findings, and an application to large language model evaluation illustrates uncertainty-aware estimation and ranking of latent model capabilities.

math.ST↗

arXiv2026

High-order Accurate Inference on Manifolds

We present a new framework for statistical inference on Riemannian manifolds that achieves high-order accuracy, addressing the challenges posed by non-Euclidean parameter spaces frequently encountered in modern data science. Our approach leverages a novel and computationally efficient procedure to reach higher-order asymptotic precision. In particular, we develop a bootstrap algorithm on Riemannian manifolds that is both computationally efficient and accurate for hypothesis testing and confidence region construction. Although locational hypothesis testing can be reformulated as a standard Euclidean problem, constructing high-order accurate confidence regions necessitates careful treatment of manifold geometry. To this end, we establish high-order asymptotics under an appropriate coordinate representation induced by a second-order retraction, thereby enabling precise expansions that incorporate curvature effects. We demonstrate the versatility of this framework across various manifold settings, including spheres, the Stiefel manifold, fixed-rank matrix manifolds, and rank-one tensor manifolds; for Euclidean submanifolds, we also introduce a class of projection-like coordinate charts with strong consistency properties. Finally, numerical studies confirm the practical merits of the proposed procedure.

math.ST↗

arXiv2026

Minimax-Optimal Spectral Clustering with Covariance Projection for High-Dimensional Anisotropic Mixtures

In mixture models, anisotropic noise within each cluster is widely present in real-world data. This work investigates both computationally efficient procedures and fundamental statistical limits for clustering in high-dimensional anisotropic mixtures. We propose a new clustering method, Covariance Projected Spectral Clustering (COPO), which adapts to a wide range of dependent noise structures. We first project the data onto a low-dimensional space via eigen-decomposition of a diagonal-deleted Gram matrix. Our central methodological idea is to sharpen clustering in this embedding space by a covariance-aware reassignment step, using quadratic distances induced by estimated projected covariances. Through a novel row-wise analysis of the subspace estimation step in weak-signal regimes, which is of independent interest, we establish tight performance guarantees and algorithmic upper bounds for COPO, covering both Gaussian noise with flexible covariance and general noise with local dependence. To characterize the fundamental difficulty of clustering high-dimensional anisotropic Gaussian mixtures, we further establish two distinct and complementary minimax lower bounds, each highlighting different covariance-driven barriers. Our results show that COPO attains minimax-optimal misclustering rates in Gaussian settings. Extensive simulation studies across diverse noise structures, along with a real data application, demonstrate the superior empirical performance of our method.

math.ST↗

arXiv2024

Generalized Grade-of-Membership Estimation for High-dimensional Locally Dependent Data

This work focuses on the mixed membership models for multivariate categorical data widely used for analyzing survey responses and population genetics data. These grade of membership (GoM) models offer rich modeling power but present significant estimation challenges for high-dimensional polytomous data. Popular existing approaches, such as Bayesian MCMC inference, are not scalable and lack theoretical guarantees in high-dimensional settings. To address this, we first observe that data from this model can be reformulated as a three-way (quasi-)tensor, with many subjects responding to many items with varying numbers of categories. We introduce a novel and simple approach that flattens the three-way quasi-tensor into a "fat" matrix, and then perform a singular value decomposition of it to estimate parameters by exploiting the singular subspace geometry. Our fast spectral method can accommodate a broad range of data distributions with arbitrarily locally dependent noise, which we formalize as the generalized-GoM models. We establish finite-sample entrywise error bounds for the generalized-GoM model parameters. This is supported by a new sharp two-to-infinity singular subspace perturbation theory for locally dependent and flexibly distributed noise, a contribution of independent interest. Simulations and applications to data in political surveys, population genetics, and single-cell sequencing demonstrate our method's superior performance.

stat.ME↗