No Arabic abstract
Gaussian Graphical Models (GGMs) have wide-ranging applications in machine learning and the natural and social sciences. In most of the settings in which they are applied, the number of observed samples is much smaller than the dimension and they are assumed to be sparse. While there are a variety of algorithms (e.g. Graphical Lasso, CLIME) that provably recover the graph structure with a logarithmic number of samples, they assume various conditions that require the precision matrix to be in some sense well-conditioned. Here we give the first polynomial-time algorithms for learning attractive GGMs and walk-summable GGMs with a logarithmic number of samples without any such assumptions. In particular, our algorithms can tolerate strong dependencies among the variables. Our result for structure recovery in walk-summable GGMs is derived from a more general result for efficient sparse linear regression in walk-summable models without any norm dependencies. We complement our results with experiments showing that many existing algorithms fail even in some simple settings where there are long dependency chains, whereas ours do not.
We study the fundamental problems of agnostically learning halfspaces and ReLUs under Gaussian marginals. In the former problem, given labeled examples $(mathbf{x}, y)$ from an unknown distribution on $mathbb{R}^d times { pm 1}$, whose marginal distribution on $mathbf{x}$ is the standard Gaussian and the labels $y$ can be arbitrary, the goal is to output a hypothesis with 0-1 loss $mathrm{OPT}+epsilon$, where $mathrm{OPT}$ is the 0-1 loss of the best-fitting halfspace. In the latter problem, given labeled examples $(mathbf{x}, y)$ from an unknown distribution on $mathbb{R}^d times mathbb{R}$, whose marginal distribution on $mathbf{x}$ is the standard Gaussian and the labels $y$ can be arbitrary, the goal is to output a hypothesis with square loss $mathrm{OPT}+epsilon$, where $mathrm{OPT}$ is the square loss of the best-fitting ReLU. We prove Statistical Query (SQ) lower bounds of $d^{mathrm{poly}(1/epsilon)}$ for both of these problems. Our SQ lower bounds provide strong evidence that current upper bounds for these tasks are essentially best possible.
What is the optimal number of independent observations from which a sparse Gaussian Graphical Model can be correctly recovered? Information-theoretic arguments provide a lower bound on the minimum number of samples necessary to perfectly identify the support of any multivariate normal distribution as a function of model parameters. For a model defined on a sparse graph with $p$ nodes, a maximum degree $d$ and minimum normalized edge strength $kappa$, this necessary number of samples scales at least as $d log p/kappa^2$. The sample complexity requirements of existing methods for perfect graph reconstruction exhibit dependency on additional parameters that do not enter in the lower bound. The question of whether the lower bound is tight and achievable by a polynomial time algorithm remains open. In this paper, we constructively answer this question and propose an algorithm, termed DICE, whose sample complexity matches the information-theoretic lower bound up to a universal constant factor. We also propose a related algorithm SLICE that has a slightly higher sample complexity, but can be implemented as a mixed integer quadratic program which makes it attractive in practice. Importantly, SLICE retains a critical advantage of DICE in that its sample complexity only depends on quantities present in the information theoretic lower bound. We anticipate that this result will stimulate future search of computationally efficient sample-optimal algorithms.
In this paper we propose a new method to learn the underlying acyclic mixed graph of a linear non-Gaussian structural equation model given observational data. We build on an algorithm proposed by Wang and Drton, and we show that one can augment the hidden variable structure of the recovered model by learning {em multidirected edges} rather than only directed and bidirected ones. Multidirected edges appear when more than two of the observed variables have a hidden common cause. We detect the presence of such hidden causes by looking at higher order cumulants and exploiting the multi-trek rule. Our method recovers the correct structure when the underlying graph is a bow-free acyclic mixed graph with potential multi-directed edges.
We study the problem of PAC learning one-hidden-layer ReLU networks with $k$ hidden units on $mathbb{R}^d$ under Gaussian marginals in the presence of additive label noise. For the case of positive coefficients, we give the first polynomial-time algorithm for this learning problem for $k$ up to $tilde{O}(sqrt{log d})$. Previously, no polynomial time algorithm was known, even for $k=3$. This answers an open question posed by~cite{Kliv17}. Importantly, our algorithm does not require any assumptions about the rank of the weight matrix and its complexity is independent of its condition number. On the negative side, for the more general task of PAC learning one-hidden-layer ReLU networks with arbitrary real coefficients, we prove a Statistical Query lower bound of $d^{Omega(k)}$. Thus, we provide a separation between the two classes in terms of efficient learnability. Our upper and lower bounds are general, extending to broader families of activation functions.
Graphical model selection in Markov random fields is a fundamental problem in statistics and machine learning. Two particularly prominent models, the Ising model and Gaussian model, have largely developed in parallel using different (though often related) techniques, and several practical algorithms with rigorous sample complexity bounds have been established for each. In this paper, we adapt a recently proposed algorithm of Klivans and Meka (FOCS, 2017), based on the method of multiplicative weight updates, from the Ising model to the Gaussian model, via non-trivial modifications to both the algorithm and its analysis. The algorithm enjoys a sample complexity bound that is qualitatively similar to others in the literature, has a low runtime $O(mp^2)$ in the case of $m$ samples and $p$ nodes, and can trivially be implemented in an online manner.