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The Dantzig selector: statistical estimation when p is much larger than n (2005)
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BibTeX
@MISC{Candes05thedantzig,
author = {Emmanuel Candes and Terence Tao},
title = {The Dantzig selector: statistical estimation when p is much larger than n},
year = {2005}
}
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Abstract
In many important statistical applications, the number of variables or parameters p is much larger than the number of observations n. Suppose then that we have observations y = Ax + z, where x ∈ R p is a parameter vector of interest, A is a data matrix with possibly far fewer rows than columns, n ≪ p, and the zi’s are i.i.d. N(0, σ 2). Is it possible to estimate x reliably based on the noisy data y? To estimate x, we introduce a new estimator—we call the Dantzig selector—which is solution to the ℓ1-regularization problem min ˜x∈R p ‖˜x‖ℓ1 subject to ‖A T r‖ℓ ∞ ≤ (1 + t −1) √ 2 log p · σ, where r is the residual vector y − A˜x and t is a positive scalar. We show that if A obeys a uniform uncertainty principle (with unit-normed columns) and if the true parameter vector x is sufficiently sparse (which here roughly guarantees that the model is identifiable), then with very large probability ‖ˆx − x ‖ 2 ℓ2 ≤ C2 ( · 2 log p · σ 2 + ∑ min(x 2 i, σ 2) Our results are nonasymptotic and we give values for the constant C. In short, our estimator achieves a loss within a logarithmic factor of the ideal mean squared error one would achieve with an oracle which would supply perfect information about which coordinates are nonzero, and which were above the noise level. In multivariate regression and from a model selection viewpoint, our result says that it is possible nearly to select the best subset of variables, by solving a very simple convex program, which in fact can easily be recast as a convenient linear program (LP).
Keyphrases
dantzig selector statistical estimation residual vector noise level unit-normed column simple convex program positive scalar data matrix noisy data uniform uncertainty principle 1-regularization problem min perfect information multivariate regression many important statistical application large probability true parameter vector ideal mean new estimator convenient linear program parameter vector model selection viewpoint logarithmic factor
