This paper shows that the solutions to various 1-norm minimization problems are unique if, and only if, a common set of conditions are satisfied. This result applies broadly to the basis pursuit model, basis pursuit denoising model, Lasso model, as well as certain other 1-norm related models. This condition is previously known to be sufficient for the basis pursuit model to have a unique solution. Indeed, it is also necessary, and applies to a variety of 1-norm related models. The paper also discusses ways to recognize unique solutions and verify the uniqueness conditions numerically. The proof technique is based on linear programming strong duality and strict complementarity results.
@cite_12: The lasso is a popular tool for sparse linear regression, especially for problems in which the number of variables p exceeds the number of observations n. But when p > n, the lasso criterion is not strictly convex, and hence it may not have a unique minimum. An important question is: when is the lasso solution well-defined (unique)? We review results from the literature, which show that if the predictor variables are drawn from a continuous probability distribution, then there is a unique lasso solution with probability one, regardless of the sizes of n and p. We also show that this result extends easily to l1 penalized minimization problems over a wide range of loss functions. A second important question is: how can we manage the case of non-uniqueness in lasso solutions? In light of the aforementioned result, this case really only arises when some of the predictor variables are discrete, or when some post-processing has been performed on continuous predictor measurements. Though we certainly cannot claim to provide a complete answer to such a broad question, we do present progress towards understanding some aspects of nonuniqueness. First, we extend the LARS algorithm for computing the lasso solution path to cover the non-unique case, so that this path algorithm works for any predictor matrix. Next, we derive a simple method for computing the component-wise uncertainty in lasso solutions of any given problem instance, based on linear programming. Finally, we review results from the literature on some of the unifying properties of lasso solutions, and also point out particular forms of solutions that have distinctive properties.
Very recently, work @cite_12 investigates the solution uniqueness of and presents the following result. In Theorem , the necessity part for almost every @math '' is new. Indeed, it is not for every @math . An example is given in ) with a unique solution @math and @math , but @math does not full column rank. On the other hand, we can figure out a special case in which the full column rankness of @math becomes necessary for all @math in the following corollary, whose proof is given at the end of Section .