Related papers: Stochastic diagonal estimation: probabilistic boun…

Motivated by problems in controlled experiments, we study the discrepancy of random matrices with continuous entries where the number of columns $n$ is much larger than the number of rows $m$. Our first result shows that if $\omega(1) = m =…

We prove a \emph{query complexity} lower bound on rank-one principal component analysis (PCA). We consider an oracle model where, given a symmetric matrix $M \in \mathbb{R}^{d \times d}$, an algorithm is allowed to make $T$ \emph{exact}…

Stochastic versions of proximal methods have gained much attention in statistics and machine learning. These algorithms tend to admit simple, scalable forms, and enjoy numerical stability via implicit updates. In this work, we propose and…

Stochastic approximation algorithm is a useful technique which has been exploited successfully in probability theory and statistics for a long time. The step sizes used in stochastic approximation are generally taken to be deterministic and…

We consider distributed estimation of the inverse covariance matrix, also called the concentration or precision matrix, in Gaussian graphical models. Traditional centralized estimation often requires global inference of the covariance…

This paper considers the problem of minimizing a convex expectation function with a set of inequality convex expectation constraints. We present a computable stochastic approximation type algorithm, namely the stochastic linearized proximal…

We consider stochastic variational inequalities with monotone operators defined as the expected value of a random operator. We assume the feasible set is the intersection of a large family of convex sets. We propose a method that combines…

Approximate inference in probabilistic graphical models (PGMs) can be grouped into deterministic methods and Monte-Carlo-based methods. The former can often provide accurate and rapid inferences, but are typically associated with biases…

For a fixed unit vector a=(a_1,a_2,...,a_n) in S^{n-1}, i.e. sum_{i=1}^n a_i^2=1, we consider the 2^n sign vectors epsilon=(epsilon_1,epsilon_2,...,epsilon_n) in {-1,1}^n and the corresponding scalar products a.epsilon=sum_{i=1}^n a_i…

We study deterministic and stochastic primal-dual sub-gradient algorithms for distributed optimization of a separable objective function with global inequality constraints. In both algorithms, the norm of the Lagrangian multipliers are…

We give new lower and upper bounds on the permanent of a doubly stochastic matrix. Combined with previous work, this improves on the deterministic approximation factor for the permanent. We also give a combinatorial application of the lower…

In this paper we consider the estimation of unknown parameters in Bayesian inverse problems. In most cases of practical interest, there are several barriers to performing such estimation, This includes a numerical approximation of a…

We give a sketching-based iterative algorithm that computes a $1+\varepsilon$ approximate solution for the ridge regression problem $\min_x \|Ax-b\|_2^2 +\lambda\|x\|_2^2$ where $A \in R^{n \times d}$ with $d \ge n$. Our algorithm, for a…

Many randomized approximation algorithms operate by giving a procedure for simulating a random variable $X$ which has mean $\mu$ equal to the target answer, and a relative standard deviation bounded above by a known constant $c$. Examples…

Suppose that we observe entries or, more generally, linear combinations of entries of an unknown $m\times T$-matrix $A$ corrupted by noise. We are particularly interested in the high-dimensional setting where the number $mT$ of unknown…

We consider a distributionally robust second-order stochastic dominance constrained optimization problem. We require the dominance constraints hold with respect to all probability distributions in a Wasserstein ball centered at the…

Stochastic constraints, which incorporate both deterministic parameters and random variables, extend classical deterministic constraints by explicitly accounting for uncertainty. These constraints are increasingly prevalent in data science,…

We revisit the classical problem of universal prediction of stochastic sequences with a finite time horizon $T$ known to the learner. The question we investigate is whether it is possible to derive vanishing regret bounds that hold with…

We give upper and lower bounds on the determinant of a perturbation of the identity matrix or, more generally, a perturbation of a nonsingular diagonal matrix. The matrices considered are, in general, diagonally dominant. The lower bounds…

The pseudo-marginal algorithm is a variant of the Metropolis--Hastings algorithm which samples asymptotically from a probability distribution when it is only possible to estimate unbiasedly an unnormalized version of its density.…