Abstract not found

We consider a problem of considerable practical interest: the recovery of a data matrix from a sampling of its entries. Suppose that we observe m entries selected uniformly at random from a matrix M. Can we complete the matrix and recover the entries that we have not seen? We show that one can perfectly recover most low-rank matrices from what appears to be an incomplete set of entries. We prove that if the number m of sampled entries obeys m ≥ C n 1.2 r log n for some positive numerical constant C, then with very high probability, most n × n matrices of rank r can be perfectly recovered by solving a simple convex optimization program. This program finds the matrix with minimum nuclear norm that fits the data. The condition above assumes that the rank is not too large. However, if one replaces the 1.2 exponent with 1.25, then the result holds for all values of the rank. Similar results hold for arbitrary rectangular matrices as well. Our results are connected with the recent literature on compressed sensing, and show that objects other than signals and images can be perfectly reconstructed from very limited information.

The affine rank minimization problem consists of finding a matrix of minimum rank that satisfies a given system of linear equality constraints. Such problems have appeared in the literature of a diverse set of fields including system identification and control, Euclidean embedding, and collaborative filtering. Although specific instances can often be solved with specialized algorithms, the general affine rank minimization problem is NP-hard, because it contains vector cardinality minimization as a special case. In this paper, we show that if a certain restricted isometry property holds for the linear transformation defining the constraints, the minimum rank solution can be recovered by solving a convex optimization problem, namely the minimization of the nuclear norm over the given affine space. We present several random ensembles of equations where the restricted isometry property holds with overwhelming probability, provided the codimension of the subspace is sufficiently large. The techniques used in our analysis have strong parallels in the compressed sensing framework. We discuss how affine rank minimization generalizes this pre-existing concept and outline a dictionary relating concepts from cardinality minimization to those of rank minimization. We also discuss several algorithmic approaches to solving the norm minimization relaxations, and illustrate our results with numerical examples.

Optimization problems involving the eigenvalues of symmetric and nonsymmetric matrices present a fascinating mathematical challenge. Such problems arise often in theory and practice, particularly in engineering design, and are amenable to a rich blend of classical mathematical techniques and contemporary optimization theory. This essay presents a personal choice of some central mathematical ideas, outlined for the broad optimization community. I discuss the convex analysis of spectral functions and invariant matrix norms, touching briey on semide nite representability, and then outlining two broader algebraic viewpoints based on hyperbolic polynomials and Lie algebra. Analogous nonconvex notions lead into eigenvalue perturbation theory. The last third of the article concerns stability, for polynomials, matrices, and associated dynamical systems, ending with a section on robustness. The powerful and elegant language of nonsmooth analysis appears throughout, as a unifying narrative thread.

This paper is concerned with the problem of recovering an unknown matrix from a small fraction of its entries. This is known as the matrix completion problem, and comes up in a great number of applications, including the famous Netflix Prize and other similar questions in collaborative filtering. In general, accurate recovery of a matrix from a small number of entries is impossible; but the knowledge that the unknown matrix has low rank radically changes this premise, making the search for solutions meaningful. This paper presents optimality results quantifying the minimum number of entries needed to recover a matrix of rank r exactly by any method whatsoever (the information theoretic limit). More importantly, the paper shows that, under certain incoherence assumptions on the singular vectors of the matrix, recovery is possible by solving a convenient convex program as soon as the number of entries is on the order of the information theoretic limit (up to logarithmic factors). This convex program simply finds, among all matrices consistent with the observed entries, that with minimum nuclear norm. As an example, we show that on the order of nr log(n) samples are needed to recover a random n × n matrix of rank r by any method, and to be sure, nuclear norm minimization succeeds as soon as the number of entries is of the form nrpolylog(n).

There is growing interest in optimization problems with real symmetric matrices as variables. Generally the matrix functions involved are spectral: they depend only on the eigenvalues of the matrix. It is known that convex spectral functions can be characterized exactly as symmetric convex functions of the eigenvalues. A new approach to this characterization is given, via a simple Fenchel conjugacy formula. We then apply this formula to derive expressions for subdifferentials, and to study duality relationships for convex optimization problems with positive semidefinite matrices as variables. Analogous results hold for Hermitian matrices. Key Words: convexity, matrix function, Schur convexity, Fenchel duality, subdifferential, unitarily invariant, spectral function, positive semidefinite programming, quasi-Newton update. AMS 1991 Subject Classification: Primary 15A45 49N15 Secondary 90C25 65K10 1 Introduction A matrix norm on the n \Theta n complex matrices is called unitarily inv...

Abstract. Suppose we are given a matrix that is formed by adding an unknown sparse matrix to an unknown low-rank matrix. Our goal is to decompose the given matrix into its sparse and low-rank components. Such a problem arises in a number of applications in model and system identification, and is intractable to solve in general. In this paper we consider a convex optimization formulation to splitting the specified matrix into its components, by minimizing a linear combination of the ℓ1 norm and the nuclear norm of the components. We develop a notion of rank-sparsity incoherence, expressed as an uncertainty principle between the sparsity pattern of a matrix and its row and column spaces, and use it to characterize both fundamental identifiability as well as (deterministic) sufficient conditions for exact recovery. Our analysis is geometric in nature with the tangent spaces to the algebraic varieties of sparse and low-rank matrices playing a prominent role. When the sparse and low-rank matrices are drawn from certain natural random ensembles, we show that the sufficient conditions for exact recovery are satisfied with high probability. We conclude with simulation results on synthetic matrix decomposition problems.

. We study the method of bounding the spectral gap of a reversible Markov chain by establishing canonical paths between the states. We provide natural examples where improved bounds can be obtained by allowing variable length functions on the edges. We give a simple heuristic for computing good length functions. Further generalization using multicommodity flow yields a bound which is an invariant of the Markov chain, and which can be computed at an arbitrary precision in polynomial time via semidefinite programming. We show that, for any reversible Markov chain on n states, this bound is off by a factor of order at most log 2 n, and that this can be tight. 1 Introduction Let (Xm ); m 0, be an irreducible Markov chain on a finite state space V with transition matrix P and stationary distribution ß. We assume that P is reversible, that is ß(x)P (x; y) = ß(y)P (y; x) = Q(x; y); for all x; y 2 V: Under these conditions, all the eigenvalues of P are real, and will be denoted by 1 = ...

Certain interesting classes of functions on a real inner product space are invariant under an associated group of orthogonal linear transformations. This invariance can be made explicit via a simple decomposition. For example, rotationally invariant functions on R 2 are just even functions of the Euclidean norm, and functions on the Hermitian matrices (with trace inner product) which are invariant under unitary similarity transformations are just symmetric functions of the eigenvalues. We develop a framework for answering geometric and analytic (both classical and nonsmooth) questions about such a function by answering the corresponding question for the (much simpler) function appearing in the decomposition. The aim is to understand and extend the foundations of eigenvalue optimization, matrix approximation, and semidefinite programming. 2 1 Introduction Why is there such a strong parallel between, on the one hand, semidefinite programming and other eigenvalue optimizat...

this paper is to give a simple, self-contained approach to this problem, giving back the subdifferential formula for (1.2) in [13] for example. Our idea will be to generalize von Neumann's result somewhat by asking which convex functions (rather than simply norms) are unitarily invariant: appropriately, the key idea will be a Fenchel conjugacy formula analogous to von Neumann's polarity formula (1.1): (f ffi oe)