Phase Transitions in the Pooled Data Problem

In this paper, we study the pooled data problem of identifying the labels associated with a large collection of items, based on a sequence of pooled tests revealing the counts of each label within the pool. In the noiseless setting, we identify an exact asymptotic threshold on the required number of tests with optimal decoding, and prove a phase transition between complete success and complete failure. In addition, we present a novel noisy variation of the problem, and provide an information-theoretic framework for characterizing the required number of tests for general random noise models. Our results reveal that noise can make the problem considerably more difficult, with strict increases in the scaling laws even at low noise levels. Finally, we demonstrate similar behavior in an approximate recovery setting, where a given number of errors is allowed in the decoded labels.Comment: Accepted to NIPS 201

Kernel Conjugate Gradient Methods with Random Projections

We propose and study kernel conjugate gradient methods (KCGM) with random projections for least-squares regression over a separable Hilbert space. Considering two types of random projections generated by randomized sketches and Nystr\"{o}m subsampling, we prove optimal statistical results with respect to variants of norms for the algorithms under a suitable stopping rule. Particularly, our results show that if the projection dimension is proportional to the effective dimension of the problem, KCGM with randomized sketches can generalize optimally, while achieving a computational advantage. As a corollary, we derive optimal rates for classic KCGM in the case that the target function may not be in the hypothesis space, filling a theoretical gap.Comment: 43 pages, 2 figure

Limits on Support Recovery with Probabilistic Models: An Information-Theoretic Framework

The support recovery problem consists of determining a sparse subset of a set of variables that is relevant in generating a set of observations, and arises in a diverse range of settings such as compressive sensing, and subset selection in regression, and group testing. In this paper, we take a unified approach to support recovery problems, considering general probabilistic models relating a sparse data vector to an observation vector. We study the information-theoretic limits of both exact and partial support recovery, taking a novel approach motivated by thresholding techniques in channel coding. We provide general achievability and converse bounds characterizing the trade-off between the error probability and number of measurements, and we specialize these to the linear, 1-bit, and group testing models. In several cases, our bounds not only provide matching scaling laws in the necessary and sufficient number of measurements, but also sharp thresholds with matching constant factors. Our approach has several advantages over previous approaches: For the achievability part, we obtain sharp thresholds under broader scalings of the sparsity level and other parameters (e.g., signal-to-noise ratio) compared to several previous works, and for the converse part, we not only provide conditions under which the error probability fails to vanish, but also conditions under which it tends to one.Comment: Accepted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory; presented in part at ISIT 2015 and SODA 201

Near-Optimal Noisy Group Testing via Separate Decoding of Items

The group testing problem consists of determining a small set of defective items from a larger set of items based on a number of tests, and is relevant in applications such as medical testing, communication protocols, pattern matching, and more. In this paper, we revisit an efficient algorithm for noisy group testing in which each item is decoded separately (Malyutov and Mateev, 1980), and develop novel performance guarantees via an information-theoretic framework for general noise models. For the special cases of no noise and symmetric noise, we find that the asymptotic number of tests required for vanishing error probability is within a factor $\log 2 \approx 0.7$ of the information-theoretic optimum at low sparsity levels, and that with a small fraction of allowed incorrectly decoded items, this guarantee extends to all sublinear sparsity levels. In addition, we provide a converse bound showing that if one tries to move slightly beyond our low-sparsity achievability threshold using separate decoding of items and i.i.d. randomized testing, the average number of items decoded incorrectly approaches that of a trivial decoder.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processin

Convergence of the Exponentiated Gradient Method with Armijo Line Search

Consider the problem of minimizing a convex differentiable function on the probability simplex, spectrahedron, or set of quantum density matrices. We prove that the exponentiated gradient method with Armjo line search always converges to the optimum, if the sequence of the iterates possesses a strictly positive limit point (element-wise for the vector case, and with respect to the Lowner partial ordering for the matrix case). To the best our knowledge, this is the first convergence result for a mirror descent-type method that only requires differentiability. The proof exploits self-concordant likeness of the log-partition function, which is of independent interest.Comment: 18 page

A Primal-Dual Algorithmic Framework for Constrained Convex Minimization

We present a primal-dual algorithmic framework to obtain approximate solutions to a prototypical constrained convex optimization problem, and rigorously characterize how common structural assumptions affect the numerical efficiency. Our main analysis technique provides a fresh perspective on Nesterov's excessive gap technique in a structured fashion and unifies it with smoothing and primal-dual methods. For instance, through the choices of a dual smoothing strategy and a center point, our framework subsumes decomposition algorithms, augmented Lagrangian as well as the alternating direction method-of-multipliers methods as its special cases, and provides optimal convergence rates on the primal objective residual as well as the primal feasibility gap of the iterates for all.Comment: This paper consists of 54 pages with 7 tables and 12 figure

On the linear convergence of the stochastic gradient method with constant step-size

The strong growth condition (SGC) is known to be a sufficient condition for linear convergence of the stochastic gradient method using a constant step-size $\gamma$ (SGM-CS). In this paper, we provide a necessary condition, for the linear convergence of SGM-CS, that is weaker than SGC. Moreover, when this necessary is violated up to a additive perturbation $\sigma$, we show that both the projected stochastic gradient method using a constant step-size (PSGM-CS) and the proximal stochastic gradient method exhibit linear convergence to a noise dominated region, whose distance to the optimal solution is proportional to $\gamma \sigma$