In the high-dimensional regression model a response variable is linearly related to @math covariates, but the sample size @math is smaller than @math . We assume that only a small subset of covariates is active' (i.e., the corresponding coefficients are non-zero), and consider the model-selection problem of identifying the active covariates. A popular approach is to estimate the regression coefficients through the Lasso ( @math -regularized least squares). This is known to correctly identify the active set only if the irrelevant covariates are roughly orthogonal to the relevant ones, as quantified through the so called irrepresentability' condition. In this paper we study the Gauss-Lasso' selector, a simple two-stage method that first solves the Lasso, and then performs ordinary least squares restricted to the Lasso active set. We formulate generalized irrepresentability condition' (GIC), an assumption that is substantially weaker than irrepresentability. We prove that, under GIC, the Gauss-Lasso correctly recovers the active set.
@cite_0: This paper considers a natural error correcting problem with real valued input output. We wish to recover an input vector f spl isin R sup n from corrupted measurements y=Af+e. Here, A is an m by n (coding) matrix and e is an arbitrary and unknown vector of errors. Is it possible to recover f exactly from the data y? We prove that under suitable conditions on the coding matrix A, the input f is the unique solution to the spl lscr sub 1 -minimization problem ( spl par x spl par sub spl lscr 1 := spl Sigma sub i |x sub i |) min(g spl isin R sup n ) spl par y - Ag spl par sub spl lscr 1 provided that the support of the vector of errors is not too large, spl par e spl par sub spl lscr 0 :=| i:e sub i spl ne 0 | spl les spl rho spl middot m for some spl rho >0. In short, f can be recovered exactly by solving a simple convex optimization problem (which one can recast as a linear program). In addition, numerical experiments suggest that this recovery procedure works unreasonably well; f is recovered exactly even in situations where a significant fraction of the output is corrupted. This work is related to the problem of finding sparse solutions to vastly underdetermined systems of linear equations. There are also significant connections with the problem of recovering signals from highly incomplete measurements. In fact, the results introduced in this paper improve on our earlier work. Finally, underlying the success of spl lscr sub 1 is a crucial property we call the uniform uncertainty principle that we shall describe in detail.
@cite_16: Oracle inequalities and variable selection properties for the Lasso in linear models have been established under a variety of different assumptions on the design matrix. We show in this paper how the different conditions and concepts relate to each other. The restricted eigenvalue condition (, 2009) or the slightly weaker compatibility condition (van de Geer, 2007) are sufficient for oracle results. We argue that both these conditions allow for a fairly general class of design matrices. Hence, optimality of the Lasso for prediction and estimation holds for more general situations than what it appears from coherence (, 2007b,c) or restricted isometry (Candes and Tao, 2005) assumptions.
@cite_24: We show that, under a sparsity scenario, the Lasso estimator and the Dantzig selector exhibit similar behavior. For both methods, we derive, in parallel, oracle inequalities for the prediction risk in the general nonparametric regression model, as well as bounds on the l p estimation loss for 1 ≤ p ≤ 2 in the linear model when the number of variables can be much larger than the sample size.
@cite_8: 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=Xβ+z, where β∈Rp is a parameter vector of interest, X 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 β reliably based on the noisy data y?
The restricted isometry property @cite_0 @cite_8 (or the related restricted eigenvalue @cite_24 or compatibility conditions @cite_16 ) have been used to establish guarantees on the estimation and model selection errors of the Lasso or similar approaches. In particular, Bickel, Ritov and Tsybakov @cite_24 show that, under such conditions, with high probability,