Title: Large-scale Nonlinear Variable Selection via Kernel Random Features,
Abstract: We propose a new method for input variable selection in nonlinear regression.
The method is embedded into a kernel regression machine that can model general
nonlinear functions, not being a priori limited to additive models. This is the
first kernel-based variable selection method applicable to large datasets. It
sidesteps the typical poor scaling properties of kernel methods by mapping the
inputs into a relatively low-dimensional space of random features. The
algorithm discovers the variables relevant for the regression task together
with learning the prediction model through learning the appropriate nonlinear
random feature maps. We demonstrate the outstanding performance of our method
on a set of large-scale synthetic and real datasets.