A study of the classification of low-dimensional data with supervised manifold learning

Supervised manifold learning methods learn data representations by preserving the geometric structure of data while enhancing the separation between data samples from different classes. In this work, we propose a theoretical study of supervised manifold learning for classification. We consider nonlinear dimensionality reduction algorithms that yield linearly separable embeddings of training data and present generalization bounds for this type of algorithms. A necessary condition for satisfactory generalization performance is that the embedding allow the construction of a sufficiently regular interpolation function in relation with the separation margin of the embedding. We show that for supervised embeddings satisfying this condition, the classification error decays at an exponential rate with the number of training samples. Finally, we examine the separability of supervised nonlinear embeddings that aim to preserve the low-dimensional geometric structure of data based on graph representations. The proposed analysis is supported by experiments on several real data sets

Invertibility of symmetric random matrices

We study n by n symmetric random matrices H, possibly discrete, with iid above-diagonal entries. We show that H is singular with probability at most exp(-n^c), and the spectral norm of the inverse of H is O(sqrt{n}). Furthermore, the spectrum of H is delocalized on the optimal scale o(n^{-1/2}). These results improve upon a polynomial singularity bound due to Costello, Tao and Vu, and they generalize, up to constant factors, results of Tao and Vu, and Erdos, Schlein and Yau.Comment: 53 pages. Minor corrections, changes in presentation. To appear in Random Structures and Algorithm

Regularization in kernel learning

Under mild assumptions on the kernel, we obtain the best known error rates in a regularized learning scenario taking place in the corresponding reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). The main novelty in the analysis is a proof that one can use a regularization term that grows significantly slower than the standard quadratic growth in the RKHS norm.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOS728 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Local Rademacher Complexity-based Learning Guarantees for Multi-Task Learning

We show a Talagrand-type concentration inequality for Multi-Task Learning (MTL), using which we establish sharp excess risk bounds for MTL in terms of distribution- and data-dependent versions of the Local Rademacher Complexity (LRC). We also give a new bound on the LRC for norm regularized as well as strongly convex hypothesis classes, which applies not only to MTL but also to the standard i.i.d. setting. Combining both results, one can now easily derive fast-rate bounds on the excess risk for many prominent MTL methods, including---as we demonstrate---Schatten-norm, group-norm, and graph-regularized MTL. The derived bounds reflect a relationship akeen to a conservation law of asymptotic convergence rates. This very relationship allows for trading off slower rates w.r.t. the number of tasks for faster rates with respect to the number of available samples per task, when compared to the rates obtained via a traditional, global Rademacher analysis.Comment: In this version, some arguments and results (of the previous version) have been corrected, or modifie