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This work studies the strong duality of non-convex matrix factorization problems: we show that under certain dual conditions, these problems and its dual have the same optimum. This has been well understood for convex optimization, but…
In this paper, we introduce a significant extension, called scenario with certificates (SwC), of the so-called scenario approach for uncertain optimization problems. This extension is motivated by the observation that in many control…
This article presents a novel approach to solving the sparsity-constrained Orthogonal Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (SCONMF) problem, which requires decomposing a non-negative data matrix into the product of two lower-rank non-negative…
This paper addresses the optimization problem of minimizing non-convex continuous functions, which is relevant in the context of high-dimensional machine learning applications characterized by over-parametrization. We analyze a randomized…
Given full or partial information about a collection of points that lie close to a union of several subspaces, subspace clustering refers to the process of clustering the points according to their subspace and identifying the subspaces. One…
This paper studies a regularized matrix tri-factorization \(A\approx PDQ\), where \(P\) and \(Q\) are side factors and \(D\) is a central core whose conditioning can be explicitly regularized or constrained. The formulation is a structured…
Semidefinite programs (SDPs) -- some of the most useful and versatile optimization problems of the last few decades -- are often pathological: the optimal values of the primal and dual problems may differ and may not be attained. Such SDPs…
Similarity matrix serves as a fundamental tool at the core of numerous downstream machine-learning tasks. However, missing data is inevitable and often results in an inaccurate similarity matrix. To address this issue, Similarity Matrix…
This paper considers the problem of positive semidefinite factorization (PSD factorization), a generalization of exact nonnegative matrix factorization. Given an $m$-by-$n$ nonnegative matrix $X$ and an integer $k$, the PSD factorization…
This paper investigates a recently introduced notion of strong variational sufficiency in optimization problems whose importance has been highly recognized in optimization theory, numerical methods, and applications. We address a general…
We consider semidefinite programs (SDPs) with equality constraints. The variable to be optimized is a positive semidefinite matrix $X$ of size $n$. Following the Burer--Monteiro approach, we optimize a factor $Y$ of size $n \times p$…
We consider the Scenario Convex Program (SCP) for two classes of optimization problems that are not tractable in general: Robust Convex Programs (RCPs) and Chance-Constrained Programs (CCPs). We establish a probabilistic bridge from the…
Symmetric nonnegative matrix factorization (SNMF) has demonstrated to be a powerful method for data clustering. However, SNMF is mathematically formulated as a non-convex optimization problem, making it sensitive to the initialization of…
Several fundamental problems that arise in optimization and computer science can be cast as follows: Given vectors $v_1,\ldots,v_m \in \mathbb{R}^d$ and a constraint family ${\cal B}\subseteq 2^{[m]}$, find a set $S \in \cal{B}$ that…
Finding an approximate second-order stationary point (SOSP) is a well-studied and fundamental problem in stochastic nonconvex optimization with many applications in machine learning. However, this problem is poorly understood in the…
Recovering low-rank and sparse matrices from incomplete or corrupted observations is an important problem in machine learning, statistics, bioinformatics, computer vision, as well as signal and image processing. In theory, this problem can…
In some significant applications such as data forecasting, the locations of missing entries cannot obey any non-degenerate distributions, questioning the validity of the prevalent assumption that the missing data is randomly chosen…
Despite the popularity of factor models with sparse loading matrices, little attention has been given to formally address identifiability of these models beyond standard rotation-based identification such as the positive lower triangular…
Statistical model checking (SMC) is a technique for analysis of probabilistic systems that may be (partially) unknown. We present an SMC algorithm for (unbounded) reachability yielding probably approximately correct (PAC) guarantees on the…
Sparse coding (SC) is attracting more and more attention due to its comprehensive theoretical studies and its excellent performance in many signal processing applications. However, most existing sparse coding algorithms are nonconvex and…