We study the estimation error of constrained M-estimators, and derive explicit upper bounds on the expected estimation error determined by the Gaussian width of the constraint set. Both of the cases where the true parameter is on the boundary of the constraint set (matched constraint), and where the true parameter is strictly in the constraint set (mismatched constraint) are considered. For both cases, we derive novel universal estimation error bounds for regression in a generalized linear model with the canonical link function. Our error bound for the mismatched constraint case is minimax optimal in terms of its dependence on the sample size, for Gaussian linear regression by the Lasso.
In @cite_20 @cite_7 , the authors derived sharp estimation error bounds for regression in the linear model by constrained least squares (LS) estimators. The analysis in @cite_0 provides a minimax estimation error bound for the same setting . There are some related works on learning a function in a function class @cite_2 @cite_6 . When the function class is linearly parametrized by vectors in @math , and the function corresponding to @math is in the function class, the @math -estimation error in the function class may be translated into the @math -estimation error with respect to @math . A common limitation of @cite_2 @cite_6 @cite_7 @cite_20 @cite_0 is that the results are not extendable to general non-linear statistical models.
@cite_7 @cite_6 @cite_0 @cite_2 @cite_20
2077306951 2949521215 2953072791 1603156887 1928866391
We consider the problem of estimating an unknown signal @math from noisy linear observations @math . In many practical instances, @math has a certain structure that can be captured by a structure inducing convex function @math . For example, @math norm can be used to encourage a sparse solution. To estimate @math with the aid of @math , we consider the well-known LASSO method and provide sharp characterization of its performance. We assume the entries of the measurement matrix @math and the noise vector @math have zero-mean normal distributions with variances @math and @math respectively. For the LASSO estimator @math , we attempt to calculate the Normalized Square Error (NSE) defined as @math as a function of the noise level @math , the number of observations @math and the structure of the signal. We show that, the structure of the signal @math and choice of the function @math enter the error formulae through the summary parameters @math and @math , which are defined as the Gaussian squared-distances to the subdifferential cone and to the @math -scaled subdifferential, respectively. The first LASSO estimator assumes a-priori knowledge of @math and is given by @math . We prove that its worst case NSE is achieved when @math and concentrates around @math . Secondly, we consider @math , for some @math . This time the NSE formula depends on the choice of @math and is given by @math . We then establish a mapping between this and the third estimator @math . Finally, for a number of important structured signal classes, we translate our abstract formulae to closed-form upper bounds on the NSE. We obtain sharp bounds on the performance of Empirical Risk Minimization performed in a convex class and with respect to the squared loss, without assuming that class members and the target are bounded functions or have rapidly decaying tails. Rather than resorting to a concentration-based argument, the method used here relies on a small-ball' assumption and thus holds for classes consisting of heavy-tailed functions and for heavy-tailed targets. The resulting estimates scale correctly with the noise level' of the problem, and when applied to the classical, bounded scenario, always improve the known bounds. This tutorial provides an exposition of a flexible geometric framework for high dimensional estimation problems with constraints. The tutorial develops geometric intuition about high dimensional sets, justifies it with some results of asymptotic convex geometry, and demonstrates connections between geometric results and estimation problems. The theory is illustrated with applications to sparse recovery, matrix completion, quantization, linear and logistic regression and generalized linear models. This paper considers the linear inverse problem where we wish to estimate a structured signal x_0 from its corrupted observations. When the problem is ill-posed, it is natural to associate a convex function f(·) with the structure of the signal. For example, l_1 norm can be used for sparse signals. To carry out the estimation, we consider two well-known convex programs: 1) Second order cone program (SOCP), and, 2) Lasso. Assuming Gaussian measurements, we show that, if precise information about the value f(x_0) or the l_2-norm of the noise is available, one can do a particularly good job at estimation. In particular, the reconstruction error becomes proportional to the “sparsity” of the signal rather than to the ambient dimension of the noise vector. We connect our results to the existing literature and provide a discussion on their relation to the standard least-squares problem. Our error bounds are non-asymptotic and sharp, they apply to arbitrary convex functions and do not assume any distribution on the noise.