2,187 research outputs found
Best Subset Selection via a Modern Optimization Lens
In the last twenty-five years (1990-2014), algorithmic advances in integer
optimization combined with hardware improvements have resulted in an
astonishing 200 billion factor speedup in solving Mixed Integer Optimization
(MIO) problems. We present a MIO approach for solving the classical best subset
selection problem of choosing out of features in linear regression
given observations. We develop a discrete extension of modern first order
continuous optimization methods to find high quality feasible solutions that we
use as warm starts to a MIO solver that finds provably optimal solutions. The
resulting algorithm (a) provides a solution with a guarantee on its
suboptimality even if we terminate the algorithm early, (b) can accommodate
side constraints on the coefficients of the linear regression and (c) extends
to finding best subset solutions for the least absolute deviation loss
function. Using a wide variety of synthetic and real datasets, we demonstrate
that our approach solves problems with in the 1000s and in the 100s in
minutes to provable optimality, and finds near optimal solutions for in the
100s and in the 1000s in minutes. We also establish via numerical
experiments that the MIO approach performs better than {\texttt {Lasso}} and
other popularly used sparse learning procedures, in terms of achieving sparse
solutions with good predictive power.Comment: This is a revised version (May, 2015) of the first submission in June
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Robust methods for inferring sparse network structures
This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Computational Statistics & Data Analysis. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.Networks appear in many fields, from finance to medicine, engineering, biology and social science. They often comprise of a very large number of entities, the nodes, and the interest lies in inferring the interactions between these entities, the edges, from relatively limited data. If the underlying network of interactions is sparse, two main statistical approaches are used to retrieve such a structure: covariance modeling approaches with a penalty constraint that encourages sparsity of the network, and nodewise regression approaches with sparse regression methods applied at each node. In the presence of outliers or departures from normality, robust approaches have been developed which relax the assumption of normality. Robust covariance modeling approaches are reviewed and compared with novel nodewise approaches where robust methods are used at each node. For low-dimensional problems, classical deviance tests are also included and compared with penalized likelihood approaches. Overall, copula approaches are found to perform best: they are comparable to the other methods under an assumption of normality or mild departures from this, but they are superior to the other methods when the assumption of normality is strongly violated
Least quantile regression via modern optimization
We address the Least Quantile of Squares (LQS) (and in particular the Least
Median of Squares) regression problem using modern optimization methods. We
propose a Mixed Integer Optimization (MIO) formulation of the LQS problem which
allows us to find a provably global optimal solution for the LQS problem. Our
MIO framework has the appealing characteristic that if we terminate the
algorithm early, we obtain a solution with a guarantee on its sub-optimality.
We also propose continuous optimization methods based on first-order
subdifferential methods, sequential linear optimization and hybrid combinations
of them to obtain near optimal solutions to the LQS problem. The MIO algorithm
is found to benefit significantly from high quality solutions delivered by our
continuous optimization based methods. We further show that the MIO approach
leads to (a) an optimal solution for any dataset, where the data-points
's are not necessarily in general position, (b) a simple
proof of the breakdown point of the LQS objective value that holds for any
dataset and (c) an extension to situations where there are polyhedral
constraints on the regression coefficient vector. We report computational
results with both synthetic and real-world datasets showing that the MIO
algorithm with warm starts from the continuous optimization methods solve small
() and medium () size problems to provable optimality in under
two hours, and outperform all publicly available methods for large-scale
(10,000) LQS problems.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/14-AOS1223 the Annals of
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Convex and non-convex regularization methods for spatial point processes intensity estimation
This paper deals with feature selection procedures for spatial point
processes intensity estimation. We consider regularized versions of estimating
equations based on Campbell theorem derived from two classical functions:
Poisson likelihood and logistic regression likelihood. We provide general
conditions on the spatial point processes and on penalty functions which ensure
consistency, sparsity and asymptotic normality. We discuss the numerical
implementation and assess finite sample properties in a simulation study.
Finally, an application to tropical forestry datasets illustrates the use of
the proposed methods
Explaining Africaâs public consumption procyclicality : revisiting old evidence
This paper compiles a novel dataset of time-varying measures of government consumption cyclicality for a panel of 46 African economies between 1960 and 2014. Government consumption has, generally, been highly procyclical over time in this group of countries. However, sample averages hide serious heterogeneity across countries with the majority of them showing procyclical behavior despite some positive signs of graduation from the âprocyclicality trapâ in a few cases. By means of weighted least squares regressions, we find that more developed African economies tend to have a smaller degree of government consumption procyclicality. Countries with higher social fragmentation and those are more reliant on foreign aid inflows tend to have a more procyclical government consumption policy. Better governance promotes counter- cyclical fiscal policy whileincreased democracy dampens it. Finally, some fiscal rules are important in curbing the procyclical behavior of government consumption.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Model of Robust Regression with Parametric and Nonparametric Methods
In the present work, we evaluate the performance of the classical parametric estimation method "ordinary least squares" with the classical nonparametric estimation methods, some robust estimation methods and two suggested methods for conditions in which varying degrees and directions of outliers are presented in the observed data. The study addresses the problem via computer simulation methods. In order to cover the effects of various situations of outliers on the simple linear regression model, samples were classified into four cases (no outliers, outliers in the X-direction, outliers in the Y-direction and outliers in the XY-direction) and the percentages of outliers are varied between 10%, 20% and 30%. The performances of estimators are evaluated in respect to their mean squares error and relative mean squares error. Keywords: Simple Linear Regression model; Ordinary Least Squares Method; Nonparametric Regression; Robust Regression; Least Absolute Deviations Regression; M-Estimation Regression; Trimmed Least Squares Regression
Using Stability to Select a Shrinkage Method
Shrinkage methods are estimation techniques based on optimizing expressions to find which variables to include in an analysis, typically a linear regression. The general form of these expressions is the sum of an empirical risk plus a complexity penalty based on the number of parameters. Many shrinkage methods are known to satisfy an âoracleâ property meaning that asymptotically they select the correct variables and estimate their coefficients efficiently. In Section 1.2, we show oracle properties in two general settings. The first uses a log likelihood in place of the empirical risk and allows a general class of penalties. The second uses a general class of empirical risks and a general class of penalties obtaining limiting behavior for a large class of smooth likelihoods. The second contribution of this thesis is to realize that shrinkage techniques with oracle properties are asymptotically the same, but differ in their finite sample properties. To address this, in Section 2.1, we propose selection of a shrinkage method based on a stability criterion. Part of our analysis in Section 2.2 is a computational comparison of several specific shrinkage methods. In future work, we hope to optimize a stability criterion directly to derive a data driven shrinkage method using techniques from genetic algorithms. We describe this in Section 2.3 as future work.
Adviser: Bertrand Clark
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