Relative Error Tensor Low Rank Approximation

We consider relative error low rank approximation of $tensors$ with respect to the Frobenius norm: given an order-$q$ tensor $A \in \mathbb{R}^{\prod_{i=1}^q n_i}$, output a rank-$k$ tensor $B$ for which $\|A-B\|_F^2 \leq (1+\epsilon)$OPT, where OPT $= \inf_{\textrm{rank-}k~A'} \|A-A'\|_F^2$. Despite the success on obtaining relative error low rank approximations for matrices, no such results were known for tensors. One structural issue is that there may be no rank-$k$ tensor $A_k$ achieving the above infinum. Another, computational issue, is that an efficient relative error low rank approximation algorithm for tensors would allow one to compute the rank of a tensor, which is NP-hard. We bypass these issues via (1) bicriteria and (2) parameterized complexity solutions: (1) We give an algorithm which outputs a rank $k' = O((k/\epsilon)^{q-1})$ tensor $B$ for which $\|A-B\|_F^2 \leq (1+\epsilon)$OPT in $nnz(A) + n \cdot \textrm{poly}(k/\epsilon)$ time in the real RAM model. Here $nnz(A)$ is the number of non-zero entries in $A$. (2) We give an algorithm for any $\delta >0$ which outputs a rank $k$ tensor $B$ for which $\|A-B\|_F^2 \leq (1+\epsilon)$OPT and runs in $( nnz(A) + n \cdot \textrm{poly}(k/\epsilon) + \exp(k^2/\epsilon) ) \cdot n^\delta$ time in the unit cost RAM model. For outputting a rank-$k$ tensor, or even a bicriteria solution with rank-$Ck$ for a certain constant $C > 1$, we show a $2^{\Omega(k^{1-o(1)})}$ time lower bound under the Exponential Time Hypothesis. Our results give the first relative error low rank approximations for tensors for a large number of robust error measures for which nothing was known, as well as column row and tube subset selection. We also obtain new results for matrices, such as $nnz(A)$-time CUR decompositions, improving previous $nnz(A)\log n$-time algorithms, which may be of independent interest