Linear Regression under Missing or Corrupted Coordinates

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Diakonikolas, Ilias, Diakonikolas, Jelena, Kane, Daniel M., Lee, Jasper C. H., Pittas, Thanasis
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Diakonikolas, Ilias
Diakonikolas, Jelena
Kane, Daniel M.
Lee, Jasper C. H.
Pittas, Thanasis
author_facet Diakonikolas, Ilias
Diakonikolas, Jelena
Kane, Daniel M.
Lee, Jasper C. H.
Pittas, Thanasis
contents We study multivariate linear regression under Gaussian covariates in two settings, where data may be erased or corrupted by an adversary under a coordinate-wise budget. In the incomplete data setting, an adversary may inspect the dataset and delete entries in up to an $η$-fraction of samples per coordinate; a strong form of the Missing Not At Random model. In the corrupted data setting, the adversary instead replaces values arbitrarily, and the corruption locations are unknown to the learner. Despite substantial work on missing data, linear regression under such adversarial missingness remains poorly understood, even information-theoretically. Unlike the clean setting, where estimation error vanishes with more samples, here the optimal error remains a positive function of the problem parameters. Our main contribution is to characterize this error up to constant factors across essentially the entire parameter range. Specifically, we establish novel information-theoretic lower bounds on the achievable error that match the error of (computationally efficient) algorithms. A key implication is that, perhaps surprisingly, the optimal error in the missing data setting matches that in the corruption setting-so knowing the corruption locations offers no general advantage.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_19242
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Linear Regression under Missing or Corrupted Coordinates
Diakonikolas, Ilias
Diakonikolas, Jelena
Kane, Daniel M.
Lee, Jasper C. H.
Pittas, Thanasis
Data Structures and Algorithms
Machine Learning
Statistics Theory
We study multivariate linear regression under Gaussian covariates in two settings, where data may be erased or corrupted by an adversary under a coordinate-wise budget. In the incomplete data setting, an adversary may inspect the dataset and delete entries in up to an $η$-fraction of samples per coordinate; a strong form of the Missing Not At Random model. In the corrupted data setting, the adversary instead replaces values arbitrarily, and the corruption locations are unknown to the learner. Despite substantial work on missing data, linear regression under such adversarial missingness remains poorly understood, even information-theoretically. Unlike the clean setting, where estimation error vanishes with more samples, here the optimal error remains a positive function of the problem parameters. Our main contribution is to characterize this error up to constant factors across essentially the entire parameter range. Specifically, we establish novel information-theoretic lower bounds on the achievable error that match the error of (computationally efficient) algorithms. A key implication is that, perhaps surprisingly, the optimal error in the missing data setting matches that in the corruption setting-so knowing the corruption locations offers no general advantage.
title Linear Regression under Missing or Corrupted Coordinates
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
Machine Learning
Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19242