Whitening Spherical Gaussian Mixtures in the Large-Dimensional Regime

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Boudjemaa, Mohammed Racim Moussa, Kalle, Alper, Mai, Xiaoyi, Goulart, José Henrique de Morais, Févotte, Cédric
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Boudjemaa, Mohammed Racim Moussa
Kalle, Alper
Mai, Xiaoyi
Goulart, José Henrique de Morais
Févotte, Cédric
author_facet Boudjemaa, Mohammed Racim Moussa
Kalle, Alper
Mai, Xiaoyi
Goulart, José Henrique de Morais
Févotte, Cédric
contents Whitening is a classical technique in unsupervised learning that can facilitate estimation tasks by standardizing data. An important application is the estimation of latent variable models via the decomposition of tensors built from high-order moments. In particular, whitening orthogonalizes the means of a spherical Gaussian mixture model (GMM), thereby making the corresponding moment tensor orthogonally decomposable, hence easier to decompose. However, in the large-dimensional regime (LDR) where data are high-dimensional and scarce, the standard whitening matrix built from the sample covariance becomes ineffective because the latter is spectrally distorted. Consequently, whitened means of a spherical GMM are no longer orthogonal. Using random matrix theory, we derive exact limits for their dot products, which are generally nonzero in the LDR. As our main contribution, we then construct a corrected whitening matrix that restores asymptotic orthogonality, allowing for performance gains in spherical GMM estimation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_17636
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Whitening Spherical Gaussian Mixtures in the Large-Dimensional Regime
Boudjemaa, Mohammed Racim Moussa
Kalle, Alper
Mai, Xiaoyi
Goulart, José Henrique de Morais
Févotte, Cédric
Machine Learning
Whitening is a classical technique in unsupervised learning that can facilitate estimation tasks by standardizing data. An important application is the estimation of latent variable models via the decomposition of tensors built from high-order moments. In particular, whitening orthogonalizes the means of a spherical Gaussian mixture model (GMM), thereby making the corresponding moment tensor orthogonally decomposable, hence easier to decompose. However, in the large-dimensional regime (LDR) where data are high-dimensional and scarce, the standard whitening matrix built from the sample covariance becomes ineffective because the latter is spectrally distorted. Consequently, whitened means of a spherical GMM are no longer orthogonal. Using random matrix theory, we derive exact limits for their dot products, which are generally nonzero in the LDR. As our main contribution, we then construct a corrected whitening matrix that restores asymptotic orthogonality, allowing for performance gains in spherical GMM estimation.
title Whitening Spherical Gaussian Mixtures in the Large-Dimensional Regime
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17636