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Main Authors: Ghosh, Shubhangi, Guo, Yilin, Weng, Haolei, Maleki, Arian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.13323
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author Ghosh, Shubhangi
Guo, Yilin
Weng, Haolei
Maleki, Arian
author_facet Ghosh, Shubhangi
Guo, Yilin
Weng, Haolei
Maleki, Arian
contents We consider parameter estimation under sparse linear regression -- an extensively studied problem in high-dimensional statistics and compressed sensing. While the minimax framework has been one of the most fundamental approaches for studying statistical optimality in this problem, we identify two important issues that the existing minimax analyses face: (i) The signal-to-noise ratio appears to have no effect on the minimax optimality, while it shows a major impact in numerical simulations. (ii) Estimators such as best subset selection and Lasso are shown to be minimax optimal, yet they exhibit significantly different performances in simulations. In this paper, we tackle the two issues by employing a minimax framework that accounts for variations in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), termed the SNR-aware minimax framework. We adopt a delicate higher-order asymptotic analysis technique to obtain the SNR-aware minimax risk. Our theoretical findings determine three distinct SNR regimes: low-SNR, medium-SNR, and high-SNR, wherein minimax optimal estimators exhibit markedly different behaviors. The new theory not only offers much better elaborations for empirical results, but also brings new insights to the estimation of sparse signals in noisy data.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_13323
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Signal-to-noise ratio aware minimax analysis of sparse linear regression
Ghosh, Shubhangi
Guo, Yilin
Weng, Haolei
Maleki, Arian
Statistics Theory
We consider parameter estimation under sparse linear regression -- an extensively studied problem in high-dimensional statistics and compressed sensing. While the minimax framework has been one of the most fundamental approaches for studying statistical optimality in this problem, we identify two important issues that the existing minimax analyses face: (i) The signal-to-noise ratio appears to have no effect on the minimax optimality, while it shows a major impact in numerical simulations. (ii) Estimators such as best subset selection and Lasso are shown to be minimax optimal, yet they exhibit significantly different performances in simulations. In this paper, we tackle the two issues by employing a minimax framework that accounts for variations in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), termed the SNR-aware minimax framework. We adopt a delicate higher-order asymptotic analysis technique to obtain the SNR-aware minimax risk. Our theoretical findings determine three distinct SNR regimes: low-SNR, medium-SNR, and high-SNR, wherein minimax optimal estimators exhibit markedly different behaviors. The new theory not only offers much better elaborations for empirical results, but also brings new insights to the estimation of sparse signals in noisy data.
title Signal-to-noise ratio aware minimax analysis of sparse linear regression
topic Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.13323