English

On the complexity of nonnegative matrix factorization

Numerical Analysis 2007-09-27 v2 Information Retrieval

Abstract

Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) has become a prominent technique for the analysis of image databases, text databases and other information retrieval and clustering applications. In this report, we define an exact version of NMF. Then we establish several results about exact NMF: (1) that it is equivalent to a problem in polyhedral combinatorics; (2) that it is NP-hard; and (3) that a polynomial-time local search heuristic exists.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0708.4149,
  title  = {On the complexity of nonnegative matrix factorization},
  author = {Stephen A. Vavasis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0708.4149},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

Version 2 corrects small typos; adds ref to Cohen & Rothblum; adds ref to Gillis; clarifies reduction of NMF to int. simplex

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:12:20.311Z