arXiv subjects

Samet Oymak

Publications and source records attributed to Samet Oymak.

108 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

Sharp Time--Data Tradeoffs for Linear Inverse Problems

In this paper we characterize sharp time-data tradeoffs for optimization problems used for solving linear inverse problems. We focus on the minimization of a least-squares objective subject to a constraint defined as the sub-level set of a penalty function. We present a unified convergence analysis of the gradient projection algorithm applied to such problems. We sharply characterize the convergence rate associated with a wide variety of random measurement ensembles in terms of the number of measurements and structural complexity of the signal with respect to the chosen penalty function. The results apply to both convex and nonconvex constraints, demonstrating that a linear convergence rate is attainable even though the least squares objective is not strongly convex in these settings. When specialized to Gaussian measurements our results show that such linear convergence occurs when the number of measurements is merely 4 times the minimal number required to recover the desired signal at all (a.k.a. the phase transition). We also achieve a slower but geometric rate of convergence precisely above the phase transition point. Extensive numerical results suggest that the derived rates exactly match the empirical performance.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2015

Near-Optimal Bounds for Binary Embeddings of Arbitrary Sets

We study embedding a subset $K$ of the unit sphere to the Hamming cube $\{-1,+1\}^m$. We characterize the tradeoff between distortion and sample complexity $m$ in terms of the Gaussian width $ω(K)$ of the set. For subspaces and several structured sets we show that Gaussian maps provide the optimal tradeoff $m\sim δ^{-2}ω^2(K)$, in particular for $δ$ distortion one needs $m\approxδ^{-2}{d}$ where $d$ is the subspace dimension. For general sets, we provide sharp characterizations which reduces to $m\approx{δ^{-4}}{ω^2(K)}$ after simplification. We provide improved results for local embedding of points that are in close proximity of each other which is related to locality sensitive hashing. We also discuss faster binary embedding where one takes advantage of an initial sketching procedure based on Fast Johnson-Lindenstauss Transform. Finally, we list several numerical observations and discuss open problems.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2015

Isometric sketching of any set via the Restricted Isometry Property

In this paper we show that for the purposes of dimensionality reduction certain class of structured random matrices behave similarly to random Gaussian matrices. This class includes several matrices for which matrix-vector multiply can be computed in log-linear time, providing efficient dimensionality reduction of general sets. In particular, we show that using such matrices any set from high dimensions can be embedded into lower dimensions with near optimal distortion. We obtain our results by connecting dimensionality reduction of any set to dimensionality reduction of sparse vectors via a chaining argument.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2015

Parallel Correlation Clustering on Big Graphs

Given a similarity graph between items, correlation clustering (CC) groups similar items together and dissimilar ones apart. One of the most popular CC algorithms is KwikCluster: an algorithm that serially clusters neighborhoods of vertices, and obtains a 3-approximation ratio. Unfortunately, KwikCluster in practice requires a large number of clustering rounds, a potential bottleneck for large graphs. We present C4 and ClusterWild!, two algorithms for parallel correlation clustering that run in a polylogarithmic number of rounds and achieve nearly linear speedups, provably. C4 uses concurrency control to enforce serializability of a parallel clustering process, and guarantees a 3-approximation ratio. ClusterWild! is a coordination free algorithm that abandons consistency for the benefit of better scaling; this leads to a provably small loss in the 3-approximation ratio. We provide extensive experimental results for both algorithms, where we outperform the state of the art, both in terms of clustering accuracy and running time. We show that our algorithms can cluster billion-edge graphs in under 5 seconds on 32 cores, while achieving a 15x speedup.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2015

Sparse Phase Retrieval: Uniqueness Guarantees and Recovery Algorithms

The problem of signal recovery from its Fourier transform magnitude is of paramount importance in various fields of engineering and has been around for over 100 years. Due to the absence of phase information, some form of additional information is required in order to be able to uniquely identify the signal of interest. In this work, we focus our attention on discrete-time sparse signals (of length $n$). We first show that, if the DFT dimension is greater than or equal to $2n$, almost all signals with {\em aperiodic} support can be uniquely identified by their Fourier transform magnitude (up to time-shift, conjugate-flip and global phase). Then, we develop an efficient Two-stage Sparse Phase Retrieval algorithm (TSPR), which involves: (i) identifying the support, i.e., the locations of the non-zero components, of the signal using a combinatorial algorithm (ii) identifying the signal values in the support using a convex algorithm. We show that TSPR can {\em provably} recover most $O(n^{1/2-\eps})$-sparse signals (up to a time-shift, conjugate-flip and global phase). We also show that, for most $O(n^{1/4-\eps})$-sparse signals, the recovery is {\em robust} in the presence of measurement noise. Numerical experiments complement our theoretical analysis and verify the effectiveness of TSPR.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2015

The Gaussian min-max theorem in the Presence of Convexity

Gaussian comparison theorems are useful tools in probability theory; they are essential ingredients in the classical proofs of many results in empirical processes and extreme value theory. More recently, they have been used extensively in the analysis of non-smooth optimization problems that arise in the recovery of structured signals from noisy linear observations. We refer to such problems as Primary Optimization (PO) problems. A prominent role in the study of the (PO) problems is played by Gordon's Gaussian min-max theorem (GMT) which provides probabilistic lower bounds on the optimal cost via a simpler Auxiliary Optimization (AO) problem. Motivated by resent work of M. Stojnic, we show that under appropriate convexity assumptions the (AO) problem allows one to tightly bound both the optimal cost, as well as the norm of the solution of the (PO). As an application, we use our result to develop a general framework to tightly characterize the performance (e.g. squared-error) of a wide class of convex optimization algorithms used in the context of noisy signal recovery.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2014

Simultaneously Structured Models with Application to Sparse and Low-rank Matrices

The topic of recovery of a structured model given a small number of linear observations has been well-studied in recent years. Examples include recovering sparse or group-sparse vectors, low-rank matrices, and the sum of sparse and low-rank matrices, among others. In various applications in signal processing and machine learning, the model of interest is known to be structured in several ways at the same time, for example, a matrix that is simultaneously sparse and low-rank. Often norms that promote each individual structure are known, and allow for recovery using an order-wise optimal number of measurements (e.g., $\ell_1$ norm for sparsity, nuclear norm for matrix rank). Hence, it is reasonable to minimize a combination of such norms. We show that, surprisingly, if we use multi-objective optimization with these norms, then we can do no better, order-wise, than an algorithm that exploits only one of the present structures. This result suggests that to fully exploit the multiple structures, we need an entirely new convex relaxation, i.e. not one that is a function of the convex relaxations used for each structure. We then specialize our results to the case of sparse and low-rank matrices. We show that a nonconvex formulation of the problem can recover the model from very few measurements, which is on the order of the degrees of freedom of the matrix, whereas the convex problem obtained from a combination of the $\ell_1$ and nuclear norms requires many more measurements. This proves an order-wise gap between the performance of the convex and nonconvex recovery problems in this case. Our framework applies to arbitrary structure-inducing norms as well as to a wide range of measurement ensembles. This allows us to give performance bounds for problems such as sparse phase retrieval and low-rank tensor completion.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2014

Simple Error Bounds for Regularized Noisy Linear Inverse Problems

Consider estimating a structured signal $\mathbf{x}_0$ from linear, underdetermined and noisy measurements $\mathbf{y}=\mathbf{A}\mathbf{x}_0+\mathbf{z}$, via solving a variant of the lasso algorithm: $\hat{\mathbf{x}}=\arg\min_\mathbf{x}\{ \|\mathbf{y}-\mathbf{A}\mathbf{x}\|_2+λf(\mathbf{x})\}$. Here, $f$ is a convex function aiming to promote the structure of $\mathbf{x}_0$, say $\ell_1$-norm to promote sparsity or nuclear norm to promote low-rankness. We assume that the entries of $\mathbf{A}$ are independent and normally distributed and make no assumptions on the noise vector $\mathbf{z}$, other than it being independent of $\mathbf{A}$. Under this generic setup, we derive a general, non-asymptotic and rather tight upper bound on the $\ell_2$-norm of the estimation error $\|\hat{\mathbf{x}}-\mathbf{x}_0\|_2$. Our bound is geometric in nature and obeys a simple formula; the roles of $λ$, $f$ and $\mathbf{x}_0$ are all captured by a single summary parameter $δ(λ\partial((f(\mathbf{x}_0)))$, termed the Gaussian squared distance to the scaled subdifferential. We connect our result to the literature and verify its validity through simulations.

math.OC↗

arXiv2013

Simple Bounds for Noisy Linear Inverse Problems with Exact Side Information

This paper considers the linear inverse problem where we wish to estimate a structured signal $x$ from its corrupted observations. When the problem is ill-posed, it is natural to make use of a convex function $f(\cdot)$ that exploits the structure of the signal. For example, $\ell_1$ norm can be used for sparse signals. To carry out the estimation, we consider two well-known convex programs: 1) Second order cone program (SOCP), and, 2) Lasso. Assuming Gaussian measurements, we show that, if precise information about the value $f(x)$ or the $\ell_2$-norm of the noise is available, one can do a particularly good job at estimation. In particular, the reconstruction error becomes proportional to the "sparsity" of the signal rather than the ambient dimension of the noise vector. We connect our results to existing works and provide a discussion on the relation of our results to the standard least-squares problem. Our error bounds are non-asymptotic and sharp, they apply to arbitrary convex functions and do not assume any distribution on the noise.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2013

Sharp MSE Bounds for Proximal Denoising

Denoising has to do with estimating a signal $x_0$ from its noisy observations $y=x_0+z$. In this paper, we focus on the "structured denoising problem", where the signal $x_0$ possesses a certain structure and $z$ has independent normally distributed entries with mean zero and variance $σ^2$. We employ a structure-inducing convex function $f(\cdot)$ and solve $\min_x\{\frac{1}{2}\|y-x\|_2^2+σλf(x)\}$ to estimate $x_0$, for some $λ>0$. Common choices for $f(\cdot)$ include the $\ell_1$ norm for sparse vectors, the $\ell_1-\ell_2$ norm for block-sparse signals and the nuclear norm for low-rank matrices. The metric we use to evaluate the performance of an estimate $x^*$ is the normalized mean-squared-error $\text{NMSE}(σ)=\frac{\mathbb{E}\|x^*-x_0\|_2^2}{σ^2}$. We show that NMSE is maximized as $σ\rightarrow 0$ and we find the \emph{exact} worst case NMSE, which has a simple geometric interpretation: the mean-squared-distance of a standard normal vector to the $λ$-scaled subdifferential $λ\partial f(x_0)$. When $λ$ is optimally tuned to minimize the worst-case NMSE, our results can be related to the constrained denoising problem $\min_{f(x)\leq f(x_0)}\{\|y-x\|_2\}$. The paper also connects these results to the generalized LASSO problem, in which, one solves $\min_{f(x)\leq f(x_0)}\{\|y-Ax\|_2\}$ to estimate $x_0$ from noisy linear observations $y=Ax_0+z$. We show that certain properties of the LASSO problem are closely related to the denoising problem. In particular, we characterize the normalized LASSO cost and show that it exhibits a "phase transition" as a function of number of observations. Our results are significant in two ways. First, we find a simple formula for the performance of a general convex estimator. Secondly, we establish a connection between the denoising and linear inverse problems.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2013

Sparse Phase Retrieval: Convex Algorithms and Limitations

We consider the problem of recovering signals from their power spectral density. This is a classical problem referred to in literature as the phase retrieval problem, and is of paramount importance in many fields of applied sciences. In general, additional prior information about the signal is required to guarantee unique recovery as the mapping from signals to power spectral density is not one-to-one. In this paper, we assume that the underlying signals are sparse. Recently, semidefinite programming (SDP) based approaches were explored by various researchers. Simulations of these algorithms strongly suggest that signals upto $o(\sqrt{n})$ sparsity can be recovered by this technique. In this work, we develop a tractable algorithm based on reweighted $l_1$-minimization that recovers a sparse signal from its power spectral density for significantly higher sparsities, which is unprecedented. We discuss the square-root bottleneck of the existing convex algorithms and show that a $k$-sparse signal can be efficiently recovered using $O(k^2logn)$ phaseless Fourier measurements. We also show that a $k$-sparse signal can be recovered using only $O(k log n)$ phaseless measurements if we are allowed to design the measurement matrices.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2013

The Squared-Error of Generalized LASSO: A Precise Analysis

We consider the problem of estimating an unknown signal $x_0$ from noisy linear observations $y = Ax_0 + z\in R^m$. In many practical instances, $x_0$ has a certain structure that can be captured by a structure inducing convex function $f(\cdot)$. For example, $\ell_1$ norm can be used to encourage a sparse solution. To estimate $x_0$ with the aid of $f(\cdot)$, we consider the well-known LASSO method and provide sharp characterization of its performance. We assume the entries of the measurement matrix $A$ and the noise vector $z$ have zero-mean normal distributions with variances $1$ and $σ^2$ respectively. For the LASSO estimator $x^*$, we attempt to calculate the Normalized Square Error (NSE) defined as $\frac{\|x^*-x_0\|_2^2}{σ^2}$ as a function of the noise level $σ$, the number of observations $m$ and the structure of the signal. We show that, the structure of the signal $x_0$ and choice of the function $f(\cdot)$ enter the error formulae through the summary parameters $D(cone)$ and $D(λ)$, which are defined as the Gaussian squared-distances to the subdifferential cone and to the $λ$-scaled subdifferential, respectively. The first LASSO estimator assumes a-priori knowledge of $f(x_0)$ and is given by $\arg\min_{x}\{{\|y-Ax\|_2}~\text{subject to}~f(x)\leq f(x_0)\}$. We prove that its worst case NSE is achieved when $σ\rightarrow 0$ and concentrates around $\frac{D(cone)}{m-D(cone)}$. Secondly, we consider $\arg\min_{x}\{\|y-Ax\|_2+λf(x)\}$, for some $λ\geq 0$. This time the NSE formula depends on the choice of $λ$ and is given by $\frac{D(λ)}{m-D(λ)}$. We then establish a mapping between this and the third estimator $\arg\min_{x}\{\frac{1}{2}\|y-Ax\|_2^2+ λf(x)\}$. Finally, for a number of important structured signal classes, we translate our abstract formulae to closed-form upper bounds on the NSE.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2012

Recovery of Sparse 1-D Signals from the Magnitudes of their Fourier Transform

The problem of signal recovery from the autocorrelation, or equivalently, the magnitudes of the Fourier transform, is of paramount importance in various fields of engineering. In this work, for one-dimensional signals, we give conditions, which when satisfied, allow unique recovery from the autocorrelation with very high probability. In particular, for sparse signals, we develop two non-iterative recovery algorithms. One of them is based on combinatorial analysis, which we prove can recover signals upto sparsity $o(n^{1/3})$ with very high probability, and the other is developed using a convex optimization based framework, which numerical simulations suggest can recover signals upto sparsity $o(n^{1/2})$ with very high probability.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2012

Recovering Jointly Sparse Signals via Joint Basis Pursuit

This work considers recovery of signals that are sparse over two bases. For instance, a signal might be sparse in both time and frequency, or a matrix can be low rank and sparse simultaneously. To facilitate recovery, we consider minimizing the sum of the $\ell_1$-norms that correspond to each basis, which is a tractable convex approach. We find novel optimality conditions which indicates a gain over traditional approaches where $\ell_1$ minimization is done over only one basis. Next, we analyze these optimality conditions for the particular case of time-frequency bases. Denoting sparsity in the first and second bases by $k_1,k_2$ respectively, we show that, for a general class of signals, using this approach, one requires as small as $O(\max\{k_1,k_2\}\log\log n)$ measurements for successful recovery hence overcoming the classical requirement of $Θ(\min\{k_1,k_2\}\log(\frac{n}{\min\{k_1,k_2\}}))$ for $\ell_1$ minimization when $k_1\approx k_2$. Extensive simulations show that, our analysis is approximately tight.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2011

A Simplified Approach to Recovery Conditions for Low Rank Matrices

Recovering sparse vectors and low-rank matrices from noisy linear measurements has been the focus of much recent research. Various reconstruction algorithms have been studied, including $\ell_1$ and nuclear norm minimization as well as $\ell_p$ minimization with $p<1$. These algorithms are known to succeed if certain conditions on the measurement map are satisfied. Proofs of robust recovery for matrices have so far been much more involved than in the vector case. In this paper, we show how several robust classes of recovery conditions can be extended from vectors to matrices in a simple and transparent way, leading to the best known restricted isometry and nullspace conditions for matrix recovery. Our results rely on the ability to "vectorize" matrices through the use of a key singular value inequality.

math.OC↗

arXiv2011

Finding Dense Clusters via "Low Rank + Sparse" Decomposition

Finding "densely connected clusters" in a graph is in general an important and well studied problem in the literature \cite{Schaeffer}. It has various applications in pattern recognition, social networking and data mining \cite{Duda,Mishra}. Recently, Ames and Vavasis have suggested a novel method for finding cliques in a graph by using convex optimization over the adjacency matrix of the graph \cite{Ames, Ames2}. Also, there has been recent advances in decomposing a given matrix into its "low rank" and "sparse" components \cite{Candes, Chandra}. In this paper, inspired by these results, we view "densely connected clusters" as imperfect cliques, where imperfections correspond missing edges, which are relatively sparse. We analyze the problem in a probabilistic setting and aim to detect disjointly planted clusters. Our main result basically suggests that, one can find \emph{dense} clusters in a graph, as long as the clusters are sufficiently large. We conclude by discussing possible extensions and future research directions.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2011

Subspace Expanders and Matrix Rank Minimization

Matrix rank minimization (RM) problems recently gained extensive attention due to numerous applications in machine learning, system identification and graphical models. In RM problem, one aims to find the matrix with the lowest rank that satisfies a set of linear constraints. The existing algorithms include nuclear norm minimization (NNM) and singular value thresholding. Thus far, most of the attention has been on i.i.d. Gaussian measurement operators. In this work, we introduce a new class of measurement operators, and a novel recovery algorithm, which is notably faster than NNM. The proposed operators are based on what we refer to as subspace expanders, which are inspired by the well known expander graphs based measurement matrices in compressed sensing. We show that given an $n\times n$ PSD matrix of rank $r$, it can be uniquely recovered from a minimal sampling of $O(nr)$ measurements using the proposed structures, and the recovery algorithm can be cast as matrix inversion after a few initial processing steps.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2010

New Null Space Results and Recovery Thresholds for Matrix Rank Minimization

Nuclear norm minimization (NNM) has recently gained significant attention for its use in rank minimization problems. Similar to compressed sensing, using null space characterizations, recovery thresholds for NNM have been studied in \cite{arxiv,Recht_Xu_Hassibi}. However simulations show that the thresholds are far from optimal, especially in the low rank region. In this paper we apply the recent analysis of Stojnic for compressed sensing \cite{mihailo} to the null space conditions of NNM. The resulting thresholds are significantly better and in particular our weak threshold appears to match with simulation results. Further our curves suggest for any rank growing linearly with matrix size $n$ we need only three times of oversampling (the model complexity) for weak recovery. Similar to \cite{arxiv} we analyze the conditions for weak, sectional and strong thresholds. Additionally a separate analysis is given for special case of positive semidefinite matrices. We conclude by discussing simulation results and future research directions.

math.OC↗