18,259 research outputs found
A New Geometric Approach to Latent Topic Modeling and Discovery
A new geometrically-motivated algorithm for nonnegative matrix factorization
is developed and applied to the discovery of latent "topics" for text and image
"document" corpora. The algorithm is based on robustly finding and clustering
extreme points of empirical cross-document word-frequencies that correspond to
novel "words" unique to each topic. In contrast to related approaches that are
based on solving non-convex optimization problems using suboptimal
approximations, locally-optimal methods, or heuristics, the new algorithm is
convex, has polynomial complexity, and has competitive qualitative and
quantitative performance compared to the current state-of-the-art approaches on
synthetic and real-world datasets.Comment: This paper was submitted to the IEEE International Conference on
Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) 2013 on November 30, 201
Lifts of convex sets and cone factorizations
In this paper we address the basic geometric question of when a given convex
set is the image under a linear map of an affine slice of a given closed convex
cone. Such a representation or 'lift' of the convex set is especially useful if
the cone admits an efficient algorithm for linear optimization over its affine
slices. We show that the existence of a lift of a convex set to a cone is
equivalent to the existence of a factorization of an operator associated to the
set and its polar via elements in the cone and its dual. This generalizes a
theorem of Yannakakis that established a connection between polyhedral lifts of
a polytope and nonnegative factorizations of its slack matrix. Symmetric lifts
of convex sets can also be characterized similarly. When the cones live in a
family, our results lead to the definition of the rank of a convex set with
respect to this family. We present results about this rank in the context of
cones of positive semidefinite matrices. Our methods provide new tools for
understanding cone lifts of convex sets.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figure
Computing approximate PSD factorizations
We give an algorithm for computing approximate PSD factorizations of
nonnegative matrices. The running time of the algorithm is polynomial in the
dimensions of the input matrix, but exponential in the PSD rank and the
approximation error. The main ingredient is an exact factorization algorithm
when the rows and columns of the factors are constrained to lie in a general
polyhedron. This strictly generalizes nonnegative matrix factorizations which
can be captured by letting this polyhedron to be the nonnegative orthant.Comment: 10 page
Exponential Lower Bounds for Polytopes in Combinatorial Optimization
We solve a 20-year old problem posed by Yannakakis and prove that there
exists no polynomial-size linear program (LP) whose associated polytope
projects to the traveling salesman polytope, even if the LP is not required to
be symmetric. Moreover, we prove that this holds also for the cut polytope and
the stable set polytope. These results were discovered through a new connection
that we make between one-way quantum communication protocols and semidefinite
programming reformulations of LPs.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures. This version of the paper will appear in the
Journal of the ACM. The earlier conference version in STOC'12 had the title
"Linear vs. Semidefinite Extended Formulations: Exponential Separation and
Strong Lower Bounds
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