Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1309.5310

Conditioning of Random Block Subdictionaries with Applications to Block-Sparse Recovery and Regression

Waheed U. Bajwa·Marco F. Duarte·Robert Calderbank
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The linear model, in which a set of observations is assumed to be given by a linear combination of columns of a matrix, has long been the mainstay of the statistics and signal processing literature. One particular challenge for inference under linear models is understanding the conditions on the dictionary under which reliable inference is possible. This challenge has attracted renewed attention in recent years since many modern inference problems deal with the "underdetermined" setting, in which the number of observations is much smaller than the number of columns in the dictionary. This paper makes several contributions for this setting when the set of observations is given by a linear combination of a small number of groups of columns of the dictionary, termed the "block-sparse" case. First, it specifies conditions on the dictionary under which most block subdictionaries are well conditioned. This result is fundamentally different from prior work on block-sparse inference because (i) it provides conditions that can be explicitly computed in polynomial time, (ii) the given conditions translate into near-optimal scaling of the number of columns of the block subdictionaries as a function of the number of observations for a large class of dictionaries, and (iii) it suggests that the spectral norm and the quadratic-mean block coherence of the dictionary (rather than the worst-case coherences) fundamentally limit the scaling of dimensions of the well-conditioned block subdictionaries. Second, this paper investigates the problems of block-sparse recovery and block-sparse regression in underdetermined settings. Near-optimal block-sparse recovery and regression are possible for certain dictionaries as long as the dictionary satisfies easily computable conditions and the coefficients describing the linear combination of groups of columns can be modeled through a mild statistical prior.

Explore related subjects

math.STcs.ITmath.ITstat.TH

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Waheed U. Bajwa, Marco F. Duarte, Robert Calderbank. 2016-08-28. Conditioning of Random Block Subdictionaries with Applications to Block-Sparse Recovery and Regression. https://doi.org/10.1109/tit.2015.2429632

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

The level of self-organized criticality in oscillating Brownian motion: $n$-consistency and stable Poisson-type convergence of the MLE

For some discretely observed path of oscillating Brownian motion with level of self-organized criticality $ρ_0$, we prove in the infill asymptotics that the MLE is $n$-consistent, where $n$ denotes the sample size, and derive its limit distribution with respect to stable convergence. As the transition density of this homogeneous Markov process is not even continuous in $ρ_0$, the analysis is highly non-standard. Therefore, interesting and somewhat unexpected phenomena occur: The likelihood function splits into several components, each of them contributing very differently depending on how close the argument $ρ$ is to $ρ_0$. Correspondingly, the MLE is successively excluded to lay outside a compact set, a $1/\sqrt{n}$-neighborhood and finally a $1/n$-neighborhood of $ρ_0$ asymptotically. The crucial argument to derive the stable convergence is to exploit the semimartingale structure of the sequential suitably rescaled local log-likelihood function (as a process in time). Both sequentially and as a process in $ρ$, it exhibits a bivariate Poissonian behavior in the stable limit with its intensity being a multiple of the local time at $ρ_0$.

math.ST↗
arXiv2026

Statistical models as natural transformations: meaningfulness, coherence and priors as states in Markov categories

We show that a statistical model in the sense of McCullagh, in the form given by Brøns, is a natural transformation between two functors from the category of designs to the Kleisli category Stoch of the Giry monad, provided that its components are measurable in the parameter. The condition is empty for finite models. A design-indexed quantity is a family of morphisms of Stoch defined on the parameter objects, called meaningful if it is natural. We prove that Tjur's criterion, imposed on parameter functions indexed by finite samples with multiplicities, forces the indexing by the support and then coincides with naturality over the insertions. For finite designs we show that a quantity can be corrected to a natural one within a given class of corrections if and only if a class vanishes in the first cohomology group of a Baues-Wirsching complex relative to that class, while its image in the absolute group is always zero. In the one-way layout, marginal dispersion is not meaningful, and within-group dispersion is the unique correction that leaves the merged design unchanged. A prior is a family of states on the parameter objects, called coherent over a class of design morphisms if it is natural over that class. We show that coherence at a merge confines the prior to the image of the corresponding parameter map, that coherence over the insertions is Kolmogorov consistency, and that coherence over the injections adds the exchangeability assumed by the categorical de Finetti theorem. In the finite one-way scheme, the coherent priors form polytopes of known dimension. The analogue of Jeffreys' general rule is not coherent, while the analogue for location-scale families is. Finally, we show that ridge regression is the Bayesian inversion of the Gaussian linear model with respect to a Gaussian prior, which is coherent over the insertions and never over the injections.

math.ST↗
arXiv2026

Inference for H{ü}sler-Reiss block models

Estimating the H{ü}sler-Reiss precision matrix is a fundamental problem for statistical inference in multivariate extremes. In high-dimensional settings, the number of unknown parameters grows quadratically with the dimension, making regularisation indispensable. Existing approaches regularise the estimation problem by exploiting sparsity. In this paper, we consider an alternative structural assumption, namely that the H{ü}sler-Reiss precision matrix is block-structured. To estimate such a matrix, we introduce a new regularisation framework based on a convex fusion penalty. By encouraging rows and columns to merge, this approach provides a parsimonious representation of the precision matrix, allowing for the simultaneous estimation of its coefficients and the underlying partition of the variables. The resulting convex optimisation problem is solved by an efficient algorithm combining gradient-based updates with progressive fusion steps. We establish non-asymptotic concentration bounds for the empirical weights entering the penalty and prove consistency of both block recovery and precision matrix estimation under suitable regularity conditions. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our methodology accurately recovers the latent block structure while accurately estimating the H{ü}sler-Reiss precision matrix across various configurations, illustrating the practical benefits of fusion-based regularisation for multivariate extremes. These benefits are also demonstrated by applying the proposed method to foreign exchange data.

math.ST↗