Multiclass prediction is the problem of classifying an object into a relevant target class. We consider the problem of learning a multiclass predictor that uses only few features, and in particular, the number of used features should increase sub-linearly with the number of possible classes. This implies that features should be shared by several classes. We describe and analyze the ShareBoost algorithm for learning a multiclass predictor that uses few shared features. We prove that ShareBoost efficiently finds a predictor that uses few shared features (if such a predictor exists) and that it has a small generalization error. We also describe how to use ShareBoost for learning a non-linear predictor that has a fast evaluation time. In a series of experiments with natural data sets we demonstrate the benefits of ShareBoost and evaluate its success relatively to other state-of-the-art approaches.
As mentioned before, ShareBoost follows the forward greedy selection approach for tackling the hardness of solving . The greedy approach has been widely studied in the context of learning sparse predictors for linear regression. However, in multiclass problems, one needs sparsity of groups of variables (columns of @math ). ShareBoost generalizes the fully corrective greedy selection procedure given in @cite_34 to the case of selection of groups of variables, and our analysis follows similar techniques.
@cite_34
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Recently, forward greedy selection method has been successfully applied to approximately solve sparse learning problems, characterized by a trade-off between sparsity and accuracy. In this paper, we generalize this method to the setup of sparse approximation over a pre-fixed dictionary. A fully corrective forward selection algorithm is proposed along with convergence analysis. The periteration computational overhead of the proposed algorithm is dominated by a subproblem of linear optimization over the dictionary and a subproblem to optimally adjust the aggregation weights. The former is cheaper in several applications than the Euclidean projection while the latter is typically an unconstrained optimization problem which is relatively easy to solve. Furthermore, we extend the proposed algorithm to the setting of non-negative convex sparse approximation over a dictionary. Applications of our algorithms to several concrete learning problems are explored with efficiency validated on benchmark data sets. In this paper, we address the problem of learning the structure of a pairwise graphical model from samples in a high-dimensional setting. Our first main result studies the sparsistency, or consistency in sparsity pattern recovery, properties of a forward-backward greedy algorithm as applied to general statistical models. As a special case, we then apply this algorithm to learn the structure of a discrete graphical model via neighborhood estimation. As a corollary of our general result, we derive sufficient conditions on the number of samples n, the maximum node-degree d and the problem size p, as well as other conditions on the model parameters, so that the algorithm recovers all the edges with high probability. Our result guarantees graph selection for samples scaling as n = Ω(d2 log(p)), in contrast to existing convex-optimization based algorithms that require a sample complexity of Ω(d3 log(p)). Further, the greedy algorithm only requires a restricted strong convexity condition which is typically milder than irrepresentability assumptions. We corroborate these results using numerical simulations at the end. Summary Variable selection for recovering sparsity in nonadditive and nonparametric models with high-dimensional variables has been challenging. This problem becomes even more difficult due to complications in modeling unknown interaction terms among high-dimensional variables. There is currently no variable selection method to overcome these limitations. Hence, in this article we propose a variable selection approach that is developed by connecting a kernel machine with the nonparametric regression model. The advantages of our approach are that it can: (i) recover the sparsity; (ii) automatically model unknown and complicated interactions; (iii) connect with several existing approaches including linear nonnegative garrote and multiple kernel learning; and (iv) provide flexibility for both additive and nonadditive nonparametric models. Our approach can be viewed as a nonlinear version of a nonnegative garrote method. We model the smoothing function by a Least Squares Kernel Machine (LSKM) and construct the nonnegative garrote objective function as the function of the sparse scale parameters of kernel machine to recover sparsity of input variables whose relevances to the response are measured by the scale parameters. We also provide the asymptotic properties of our approach. We show that sparsistency is satisfied with consistent initial kernel function coefficients under certain conditions. An efficient coordinate descent backfitting algorithm is developed. A resampling procedure for our variable selection methodology is also proposed to improve the power. We study the problem of selecting a subset of k random variables from a large set, in order to obtain the best linear prediction of another variable of interest. This problem can be viewed in the context of both feature selection and sparse approximation. We analyze the performance of widely used greedy heuristics, using insights from the maximization of submodular functions and spectral analysis. We introduce the submodularity ratio as a key quantity to help understand why greedy algorithms perform well even when the variables are highly correlated. Using our techniques, we obtain the strongest known approximation guarantees for this problem, both in terms of the submodularity ratio and the smallest k-sparse eigenvalue of the covariance matrix. We further demonstrate the wide applicability of our techniques by analyzing greedy algorithms for the dictionary selection problem, and significantly improve the previously known guarantees. Our theoretical analysis is complemented by experiments on real-world and synthetic data sets; the experiments show that the submodularity ratio is a stronger predictor of the performance of greedy algorithms than other spectral parameters.