David Donoho — Page 2

arXiv2007

The Simplest Solution to an Underdetermined System of Linear Equations

Consider a d*n matrix A, with d<n. The problem of solving for x in y=Ax is underdetermined, and has infinitely many solutions (if there are any). Given y, the minimum Kolmogorov complexity solution (MKCS) of the input x is defined to be an input z (out of many) with minimum Kolmogorov-complexity that satisfies y=Az. One expects that if the actual input is simple enough, then MKCS will recover the input exactly. This paper presents a preliminary study of the existence and value of the complexity level up to which such a complexity-based recovery is possible. It is shown that for the set of all d*n binary matrices (with entries 0 or 1 and d<n), MKCS exactly recovers the input for an overwhelming fraction of the matrices provided the Kolmogorov complexity of the input is O(d). A weak converse that is loose by a log n factor is also established for this case. Finally, we investigate the difficulty of finding a matrix that has the property of recovering inputs with complexity of O(d) using MKCS.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2004

Higher criticism for detecting sparse heterogeneous mixtures

Higher criticism, or second-level significance testing, is a multiple-comparisons concept mentioned in passing by Tukey. It concerns a situation where there are many independent tests of significance and one is interested in rejecting the joint null hypothesis. Tukey suggested comparing the fraction of observed significances at a given α-level to the expected fraction under the joint null. In fact, he suggested standardizing the difference of the two quantities and forming a z-score; the resulting z-score tests the significance of the body of significance tests. We consider a generalization, where we maximize this z-score over a range of significance levels 0<α\leqα_0. We are able to show that the resulting higher criticism statistic is effective at resolving a very subtle testing problem: testing whether n normal means are all zero versus the alternative that a small fraction is nonzero. The subtlety of this ``sparse normal means'' testing problem can be seen from work of Ingster and Jin, who studied such problems in great detail. In their studies, they identified an interesting range of cases where the small fraction of nonzero means is so small that the alternative hypothesis exhibits little noticeable effect on the distribution of the p-values either for the bulk of the tests or for the few most highly significant tests. In this range, when the amplitude of nonzero means is calibrated with the fraction of nonzero means, the likelihood ratio test for a precisely specified alternative would still succeed in separating the two hypotheses.

math.ST↗