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Main Authors: Hejný, Ivan, Wallin, Jonas, Bogdan, Małgorzata, Kos, Michał
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.07677
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author Hejný, Ivan
Wallin, Jonas
Bogdan, Małgorzata
Kos, Michał
author_facet Hejný, Ivan
Wallin, Jonas
Bogdan, Małgorzata
Kos, Michał
contents Popular regularizers with non-differentiable penalties, such as Lasso, Elastic Net, Generalized Lasso, or SLOPE, reduce the dimension of the parameter space by inducing sparsity or clustering in the estimators' coordinates. In this paper, we focus on linear regression and explore the asymptotic distributions of the resulting low-dimensional patterns when the number of regressors $p$ is fixed, the number of observations $n$ goes to infinity, and the penalty function increases at the rate of $\sqrt{n}$. While the asymptotic distribution of the rescaled estimation error can be derived by relatively standard arguments, convergence of patterns requires a separate proof, which is yet missing from the literature, even for the simplest case of Lasso. To fill this gap, we use the Hausdorff distance as a suitable mode of convergence for subdifferentials, resulting in the desired pattern convergence. Furthermore, we derive the exact limiting probability of recovering the true model pattern. This probability goes to 1 if and only if the penalty scaling constant diverges to infinity and the regularizer-specific asymptotic irrepresentability condition is satisfied. We then propose simple two-step procedures that asymptotically recover the model patterns, irrespective of whether the irrepresentability condition holds or not. Interestingly, our theory shows that Fused Lasso cannot reliably recover its own clustering pattern, even for independent regressors. It also demonstrates how this problem can be resolved by "concavifying" the Fused Lasso penalty coefficients. Additionally, sampling from the asymptotic error distribution facilitates comparisons between different regularizers. We provide short simulation studies showcasing an illustrative comparison between the asymptotic properties of Lasso, Fused Lasso, and SLOPE.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_07677
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Unveiling low-dimensional patterns induced by convex non-differentiable regularizers
Hejný, Ivan
Wallin, Jonas
Bogdan, Małgorzata
Kos, Michał
Statistics Theory
Popular regularizers with non-differentiable penalties, such as Lasso, Elastic Net, Generalized Lasso, or SLOPE, reduce the dimension of the parameter space by inducing sparsity or clustering in the estimators' coordinates. In this paper, we focus on linear regression and explore the asymptotic distributions of the resulting low-dimensional patterns when the number of regressors $p$ is fixed, the number of observations $n$ goes to infinity, and the penalty function increases at the rate of $\sqrt{n}$. While the asymptotic distribution of the rescaled estimation error can be derived by relatively standard arguments, convergence of patterns requires a separate proof, which is yet missing from the literature, even for the simplest case of Lasso. To fill this gap, we use the Hausdorff distance as a suitable mode of convergence for subdifferentials, resulting in the desired pattern convergence. Furthermore, we derive the exact limiting probability of recovering the true model pattern. This probability goes to 1 if and only if the penalty scaling constant diverges to infinity and the regularizer-specific asymptotic irrepresentability condition is satisfied. We then propose simple two-step procedures that asymptotically recover the model patterns, irrespective of whether the irrepresentability condition holds or not. Interestingly, our theory shows that Fused Lasso cannot reliably recover its own clustering pattern, even for independent regressors. It also demonstrates how this problem can be resolved by "concavifying" the Fused Lasso penalty coefficients. Additionally, sampling from the asymptotic error distribution facilitates comparisons between different regularizers. We provide short simulation studies showcasing an illustrative comparison between the asymptotic properties of Lasso, Fused Lasso, and SLOPE.
title Unveiling low-dimensional patterns induced by convex non-differentiable regularizers
topic Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.07677