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Main Authors: Guo, Ruixin, Li, Xinyu, Zhou, Hao, Zhou, Yang, Jin, Ruoming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.07402
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author Guo, Ruixin
Li, Xinyu
Zhou, Hao
Zhou, Yang
Jin, Ruoming
author_facet Guo, Ruixin
Li, Xinyu
Zhou, Hao
Zhou, Yang
Jin, Ruoming
contents Linear autoencoders (LAEs) have gained increasing popularity in recommender systems due to their simplicity and strong empirical performance. Most LAE models, including the Emphasized Denoising Linear Autoencoder (EDLAE) introduced by (Steck, 2020), use quadratic loss during training. However, the original EDLAE only provides closed-form solutions for the hyperparameter choice $b = 0$, which limits its capacity. In this work, we generalize EDLAE objective into a Decoupled Expected Quadratic Loss (DEQL). We show that DEQL simplifies the process of deriving EDLAE solutions and reveals solutions in a broader hyperparameter range $b > 0$, which were not derived in Steck's original paper. Additionally, we propose an efficient algorithm based on Miller's matrix inverse theorem to ensure the computational tractability for the $b > 0$ case. Empirical results on benchmark datasets show that the $b > 0$ solutions provided by DEQL outperform the $b = 0$ EDLAE baseline, demonstrating that DEQL expands the solution space and enables the discovery of models with better testing performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_07402
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Generalizing Linear Autoencoder Recommenders with Decoupled Expected Quadratic Loss
Guo, Ruixin
Li, Xinyu
Zhou, Hao
Zhou, Yang
Jin, Ruoming
Machine Learning
Linear autoencoders (LAEs) have gained increasing popularity in recommender systems due to their simplicity and strong empirical performance. Most LAE models, including the Emphasized Denoising Linear Autoencoder (EDLAE) introduced by (Steck, 2020), use quadratic loss during training. However, the original EDLAE only provides closed-form solutions for the hyperparameter choice $b = 0$, which limits its capacity. In this work, we generalize EDLAE objective into a Decoupled Expected Quadratic Loss (DEQL). We show that DEQL simplifies the process of deriving EDLAE solutions and reveals solutions in a broader hyperparameter range $b > 0$, which were not derived in Steck's original paper. Additionally, we propose an efficient algorithm based on Miller's matrix inverse theorem to ensure the computational tractability for the $b > 0$ case. Empirical results on benchmark datasets show that the $b > 0$ solutions provided by DEQL outperform the $b = 0$ EDLAE baseline, demonstrating that DEQL expands the solution space and enables the discovery of models with better testing performance.
title Generalizing Linear Autoencoder Recommenders with Decoupled Expected Quadratic Loss
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.07402