We propose a framework for distributed robust statistical learning on big contaminated data . The Distributed Robust Learning (DRL) framework can reduce the computational time of traditional robust learning methods by several orders of magnitude. We analyze the robustness property of DRL, showing that DRL not only preserves the robustness of the base robust learning method, but also tolerates contaminations on a constant fraction of results from computing nodes (node failures). More precisely, even in presence of the most adversarial outlier distribution over computing nodes, DRL still achieves a breakdown point of at least @math , where @math is the break down point of corresponding centralized algorithm. This is in stark contrast with naive division-and-averaging implementation, which may reduce the breakdown point by a factor of @math when @math computing nodes are used. We then specialize the DRL framework for two concrete cases: distributed robust principal component analysis and distributed robust regression. We demonstrate the efficiency and the robustness advantages of DRL through comprehensive simulations and predicting image tags on a large-scale image set.
@cite_15: Robust PCA methods are typically based on batch optimization and have to load all the samples into memory during optimization. This prevents them from efficiently processing big data. In this paper, we develop an Online Robust PCA (OR-PCA) that processes one sample per time instance and hence its memory cost is independent of the number of samples, significantly enhancing the computation and storage efficiency. The proposed OR-PCA is based on stochastic optimization of an equivalent reformulation of the batch RPCA. Indeed, we show that OR-PCA provides a sequence of subspace estimations converging to the optimum of its batch counterpart and hence is provably robust to sparse corruption. Moreover, OR-PCA can naturally be applied for tracking dynamic subspace. Comprehensive simulations on subspace recovering and tracking demonstrate the robustness and efficiency advantages of the OR-PCA over online PCA and batch RPCA methods.
Recently, several online robust learning algorithms were proposed to process the data in a sequential manner @cite_15 . Online learning methods partially mitigate the scalability issue of robust learning by reducing the memory cost for machines. However, the time complexity of those methods still depends linearly on the sample size, hardly affordable in practice when dealing with ultra-large datasets.