Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ruan, Feng, Liu, Keli, Jordan, Michael
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14158
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914133110161408
author Ruan, Feng
Liu, Keli
Jordan, Michael
author_facet Ruan, Feng
Liu, Keli
Jordan, Michael
contents We study a compositional variant of kernel ridge regression in which the predictor is applied to a coordinate-wise reweighting of the inputs. Formulated as a variational problem, this model provides a simple testbed for feature learning in compositional architectures. From the perspective of variable selection, we show how relevant variables are recovered while noise variables are eliminated. We establish guarantees showing that both global minimizers and stationary points discard noise coordinates when the noise variables are Gaussian distributed. A central finding is that $\ell_1$-type kernels, such as the Laplace kernel, succeed in recovering features contributing to nonlinear effects at stationary points, whereas Gaussian kernels recover only linear ones.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_14158
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Compositional Kernel Model for Feature Learning
Ruan, Feng
Liu, Keli
Jordan, Michael
Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
We study a compositional variant of kernel ridge regression in which the predictor is applied to a coordinate-wise reweighting of the inputs. Formulated as a variational problem, this model provides a simple testbed for feature learning in compositional architectures. From the perspective of variable selection, we show how relevant variables are recovered while noise variables are eliminated. We establish guarantees showing that both global minimizers and stationary points discard noise coordinates when the noise variables are Gaussian distributed. A central finding is that $\ell_1$-type kernels, such as the Laplace kernel, succeed in recovering features contributing to nonlinear effects at stationary points, whereas Gaussian kernels recover only linear ones.
title A Compositional Kernel Model for Feature Learning
topic Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14158