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1. Robust Matrix Sensing in the Semi-Random Model

   Gao, Xing; Cheng, Yu (December 2023, Proceedings of the 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems)

   Low-rank matrix recovery is a fundamental problem in machine learning with numerous applications. In practice, the problem can be solved by convex optimization namely nuclear norm minimization, or by non-convex optimization as it is well-known that for low-rank matrix problems like matrix sensing and matrix completion, all local optima of the natural non-convex objectives are also globally optimal under certain ideal assumptions. In this paper, we study new approaches for matrix sensing in a semi-random model where an adversary can add any number of arbitrary sensing matrices. More precisely, the problem is to recover a low-rank matrix $$X^\star$$ from linear measurements $$b_i = \langle A_i, X^\star \rangle$$, where an unknown subset of the sensing matrices satisfies the Restricted Isometry Property (RIP) and the rest of the $$A_i$$'s are chosen adversarially. It is known that in the semi-random model, existing non-convex objectives can have bad local optima. To fix this, we present a descent-style algorithm that provably recovers the ground-truth matrix $$X^\star$$. For the closely-related problem of semi-random matrix completion, prior work [CG18] showed that all bad local optima can be eliminated by reweighting the input data. However, the analogous approach for matrix sensing requires reweighting a set of matrices to satisfy RIP, which is a condition that is NP-hard to check. Instead, we build on the framework proposed in [KLL$^+$23] for semi-random sparse linear regression, where the algorithm in each iteration reweights the input based on the current solution, and then takes a weighted gradient step that is guaranteed to work well locally. Our analysis crucially exploits the connection between sparsity in vector problems and low-rankness in matrix problems, which may have other applications in obtaining robust algorithms for sparse and low-rank problems. 

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2. Jointly low-rank and bisparse recovery: Questions and partial answers

   https://doi.org/10.1142/S0219530519410094  

   Foucart, Simon; Gribonval, Rémi; Jacques, Laurent; Rauhut, Holger (January 2020, Analysis and Applications)

   We investigate the problem of recovering jointly [Formula: see text]-rank and [Formula: see text]-bisparse matrices from as few linear measurements as possible, considering arbitrary measurements as well as rank-one measurements. In both cases, we show that [Formula: see text] measurements make the recovery possible in theory, meaning via a nonpractical algorithm. In case of arbitrary measurements, we investigate the possibility of achieving practical recovery via an iterative-hard-thresholding algorithm when [Formula: see text] for some exponent [Formula: see text]. We show that this is feasible for [Formula: see text], and that the proposed analysis cannot cover the case [Formula: see text]. The precise value of the optimal exponent [Formula: see text] is the object of a question, raised but unresolved in this paper, about head projections for the jointly low-rank and bisparse structure. Some related questions are partially answered in passing. For rank-one measurements, we suggest on arcane grounds an iterative-hard-thresholding algorithm modified to exploit the nonstandard restricted isometry property obeyed by this type of measurements. 

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3. Nonconvex Low-Rank Tensor Completion from Noisy Data

   https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2021.2106  

   Cai, Changxiao; Li, Gen; Poor, H. Vincent; Chen, Yuxin (March 2022, Operations Research)

   We study a noisy tensor completion problem of broad practical interest, namely, the reconstruction of a low-rank tensor from highly incomplete and randomly corrupted observations of its entries. Whereas a variety of prior work has been dedicated to this problem, prior algorithms either are computationally too expensive for large-scale applications or come with suboptimal statistical guarantees. Focusing on “incoherent” and well-conditioned tensors of a constant canonical polyadic rank, we propose a two-stage nonconvex algorithm—(vanilla) gradient descent following a rough initialization—that achieves the best of both worlds. Specifically, the proposed nonconvex algorithm faithfully completes the tensor and retrieves all individual tensor factors within nearly linear time, while at the same time enjoying near-optimal statistical guarantees (i.e., minimal sample complexity and optimal estimation accuracy). The estimation errors are evenly spread out across all entries, thus achieving optimal [Formula: see text] statistical accuracy. We also discuss how to extend our approach to accommodate asymmetric tensors. The insight conveyed through our analysis of nonconvex optimization might have implications for other tensor estimation problems. 

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4. Iterative Collaborative Filtering for Sparse Matrix Estimation

   https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2021.2193  

   Borgs, Christian; Chayes, Jennifer T.; Shah, Devavrat; Yu, Christina Lee (December 2021, Operations Research)

   We consider sparse matrix estimation where the goal is to estimate an n-by-n matrix from noisy observations of a small subset of its entries. We analyze the estimation error of the popularly used collaborative filtering algorithm for the sparse regime. Specifically, we propose a novel iterative variant of the algorithm, adapted to handle the setting of sparse observations. We establish that as long as the number of entries observed at random scale logarithmically larger than linear in n, the estimation error with respect to the entry-wise max norm decays to zero as n goes to infinity, assuming the underlying matrix of interest has constant rank r. Our result is robust to model misspecification in that if the underlying matrix is approximately rank r, then the estimation error decays to the approximation error with respect to the [Formula: see text]-norm. In the process, we establish the algorithm’s ability to handle arbitrary bounded noise in the observations. 

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5. Preconditioned Gradient Descent for Over-Parameterized Nonconvex Matrix Factorization

   Zhang, Jialun; Fattahi, Salar; Zhang, Richard Y (December 2021, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems)

   In practical instances of nonconvex matrix factorization, the rank of the true solution r^{\star} is often unknown, so the rank rof the model can be over-specified as r>r^{\star}. This over-parameterized regime of matrix factorization significantly slows down the convergence of local search algorithms, from a linear rate with r=r^{\star} to a sublinear rate when r>r^{\star}. We propose an inexpensive preconditioner for the matrix sensing variant of nonconvex matrix factorization that restores the convergence rate of gradient descent back to linear, even in the over-parameterized case, while also making it agnostic to possible ill-conditioning in the ground truth. Classical gradient descent in a neighborhood of the solution slows down due to the need for the model matrix factor to become singular. Our key result is that this singularity can be corrected by \ell_{2} regularization with a specific range of values for the damping parameter. In fact, a good damping parameter can be inexpensively estimated from the current iterate. The resulting algorithm, which we call preconditioned gradient descent or PrecGD, is stable under noise, and converges linearly to an information theoretically optimal error bound. Our numerical experiments find that PrecGD works equally well in restoring the linear convergence of other variants of nonconvex matrix factorization in the over-parameterized regime. 

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