A Randomized Algorithm for Sparse PCA based on the Basic SDP Relaxation

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Hauptverfasser: Del Pia, Alberto, Zhou, Dekun
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Del Pia, Alberto
Zhou, Dekun
author_facet Del Pia, Alberto
Zhou, Dekun
contents Sparse Principal Component Analysis (SPCA) is a fundamental technique for dimensionality reduction, and is NP-hard. In this paper, we introduce a randomized approximation algorithm for SPCA, which is based on the basic SDP relaxation. Our algorithm takes an (approximate) SDP solution, constructs one deterministic sparse solution and several randomized solutions, and outputs the best among them. Our algorithm has an approximation ratio of at most the sparsity constant with high probability, if called enough times. Under a technical assumption, which is consistently satisfied in our numerical tests, the average approximation ratio is also bounded by $\mathcal{O}(\log{d})$, where $d$ is the number of features. We show that this technical assumption is satisfied if the SDP solution is low-rank, or has exponentially decaying eigenvalues. We then present two classes of instances for which this technical assumption holds. We also demonstrate that in a covariance model, which generalizes the spiked Wishart model, the deterministic solution in our algorithm achieves a near-optimal approximation ratio. We demonstrate the efficacy of our algorithm through numerical tests on real-world datasets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_09148
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Randomized Algorithm for Sparse PCA based on the Basic SDP Relaxation
Del Pia, Alberto
Zhou, Dekun
Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
Sparse Principal Component Analysis (SPCA) is a fundamental technique for dimensionality reduction, and is NP-hard. In this paper, we introduce a randomized approximation algorithm for SPCA, which is based on the basic SDP relaxation. Our algorithm takes an (approximate) SDP solution, constructs one deterministic sparse solution and several randomized solutions, and outputs the best among them. Our algorithm has an approximation ratio of at most the sparsity constant with high probability, if called enough times. Under a technical assumption, which is consistently satisfied in our numerical tests, the average approximation ratio is also bounded by $\mathcal{O}(\log{d})$, where $d$ is the number of features. We show that this technical assumption is satisfied if the SDP solution is low-rank, or has exponentially decaying eigenvalues. We then present two classes of instances for which this technical assumption holds. We also demonstrate that in a covariance model, which generalizes the spiked Wishart model, the deterministic solution in our algorithm achieves a near-optimal approximation ratio. We demonstrate the efficacy of our algorithm through numerical tests on real-world datasets.
title A Randomized Algorithm for Sparse PCA based on the Basic SDP Relaxation
topic Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09148