Related papers: A note on $L^1$-Convergence of the Empiric Minimiz…
Empirical risk minimization over classes functions that are bounded for some version of the variation norm has a long history, starting with Total Variation Denoising (Rudin et al., 1992), and has been considered by several recent articles,…
We consider best approximation problems in a nonlinear subset $\mathcal{M}$ of a Banach space of functions $(\mathcal{V},\|\bullet\|)$. The norm is assumed to be a generalization of the $L^2$-norm for which only a weighted Monte Carlo…
We study the problem of empirical minimization for variance-type functionals over functional classes. Sharp non-asymptotic bounds for the excess variance are derived under mild conditions. In particular, it is shown that under some…
Recent results in quantization theory show that the mean-squared expected distortion can reach a rate of convergence of $\mathcal{O}(1/n)$, where $n$ is the sample size [see, e.g., IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory 60 (2014) 7279-7292 or Electron.…
We consider the rate of convergence of the expected loss of empirically optimal vector quantizers. Earlier results show that the mean-squared expected distortion for any fixed distribution supported on a bounded set and satisfying some…
We develop minimax optimal risk bounds for the general learning task consisting in predicting as well as the best function in a reference set G up to the smallest possible additive term, called the convergence rate. When the reference set…
We study fundamental limits of first-order stochastic optimization in a range of nonconvex settings, including L-smooth functions satisfying Quasar-Convexity (QC), Quadratic Growth (QG), and Restricted Secant Inequalities (RSI). While the…
Sample complexity bounds are a common performance metric in the Reinforcement Learning literature. In the discounted cost, infinite horizon setting, all of the known bounds have a factor that is a polynomial in $1/(1-\gamma)$, where $\gamma…
We develop minimax optimal risk bounds for the general learning task consisting in predicting as well as the best function in a reference set $\mathcal{G}$ up to the smallest possible additive term, called the convergence rate. When the…
Motivated by applications in reinforcement learning (RL), we study a nonlinear stochastic approximation (SA) algorithm under Markovian noise, and establish its finite-sample convergence bounds under various stepsizes. Specifically, we show…
Multi-layer feedforward networks have been used to approximate a wide range of nonlinear functions. An important and fundamental problem is to understand the learnability of a network model through its statistical risk, or the expected…
The effect of errors in variables in empirical minimization is investigated. Given a loss $l$ and a set of decision rules $\mathcal{G}$, we prove a general upper bound for an empirical minimization based on a deconvolution kernel and a…
We consider the problem of approximating a function in general nonlinear subsets of $L^2$ when only a weighted Monte Carlo estimate of the $L^2$-norm can be computed. Of particular interest in this setting is the concept of sample…
We provide a unified framework to proving pointwise convergence of sparse sequences, deterministic and random, at the $L^1(X)$ endpoint. Specifically, suppose that \[ a_n \in \{ \lfloor n^c \rfloor, \min\{ k : \sum_{j \leq k} X_j = n\} \}…
We study the least squares regression function estimator over the class of real-valued functions on $[0,1]^d$ that are increasing in each coordinate. For uniformly bounded signals and with a fixed, cubic lattice design, we establish that…
We quantify the minimax rate for a nonparametric regression model over a star-shaped function class $\mathcal{F}$ with bounded diameter. We obtain a minimax rate of ${\varepsilon^{\ast}}^2\wedge\mathrm{diam}(\mathcal{F})^2$ where…
We consider the unconstrained $L_2$-$L_p$ minimization: find a minimizer of $\|Ax-b\|^2_2+\lambda \|x\|^p_p$ for given $A \in R^{m\times n}$, $b\in R^m$ and parameters $\lambda>0$, $p\in [0,1)$. This problem has been studied extensively in…
Obtaining guarantees on the convergence of the minimizers of empirical risks to the ones of the true risk is a fundamental matter in statistical learning. Instead of deriving guarantees on the usual estimation error, the goal of this paper…
We consider the estimation of a bounded regression function with nonparametric heteroscedastic noise and random design. We study the true and empirical excess risks of the least-squares estimator on finite-dimensional vector spaces. We give…
Convergence properties of empirical risk minimizers can be conveniently expressed in terms of the associated population risk. To derive bounds for the performance of the estimator under covariate shift, however, pointwise convergence rates…