We study distributed optimization algorithms for minimizing the average of convex functions. The applications include empirical risk minimization problems in statistical machine learning where the datasets are large and have to be stored on different machines. We design a distributed stochastic variance reduced gradient algorithm that, under certain conditions on the condition number, simultaneously achieves the optimal parallel runtime, amount of communication and rounds of communication among all distributed first-order methods up to constant factors. Our method and its accelerated extension also outperform existing distributed algorithms in terms of the rounds of communication as long as the condition number is not too large compared to the size of data in each machine. We also prove a lower bound for the number of rounds of communication for a broad class of distributed first-order methods including the proposed algorithms in this paper. We show that our accelerated distributed stochastic variance reduced gradient algorithm achieves this lower bound so that it uses the fewest rounds of communication among all distributed first-order algorithms.
Let @math be the computation cost of the gradient of @math . For typical problems such as logistic regression, we have @math . Let @math be the cost of solving a linear system. We have @math if exact matrix inversion is used and have @math if an @math -approximate inverse is found by an accelerated gradient method @cite_7 .
@cite_7
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Many data analysis applications deal with large matrices and involve approximating the matrix using a small number of “components.” Typically, these components are linear combinations of the rows and columns of the matrix, and are thus difficult to interpret in terms of the original features of the input data. In this paper, we propose and study matrix approximations that are explicitly expressed in terms of a small number of columns and or rows of the data matrix, and thereby more amenable to interpretation in terms of the original data. Our main algorithmic results are two randomized algorithms which take as input an @math matrix @math and a rank parameter @math . In our first algorithm, @math is chosen, and we let @math , where @math is the Moore-Penrose generalized inverse of @math . In our second algorithm @math , @math , @math are chosen, and we let @math . ( @math and @math are matrices that consist of actual columns and rows, respectively, of @math , and @math is a generalized inverse of their intersection.) For each algorithm, we show that with probability at least @math , @math , where @math is the “best” rank- @math approximation provided by truncating the SVD of @math , and where @math is the Frobenius norm of the matrix @math . The number of columns of @math and rows of @math is a low-degree polynomial in @math , @math , and @math . Both the Numerical Linear Algebra community and the Theoretical Computer Science community have studied variants of these matrix decompositions over the last ten years. However, our two algorithms are the first polynomial time algorithms for such low-rank matrix approximations that come with relative-error guarantees; previously, in some cases, it was not even known whether such matrix decompositions exist. Both of our algorithms are simple and they take time of the order needed to approximately compute the top @math singular vectors of @math . The technical crux of our analysis is a novel, intuitive sampling method we introduce in this paper called “subspace sampling.” In subspace sampling, the sampling probabilities depend on the Euclidean norms of the rows of the top singular vectors. This allows us to obtain provable relative-error guarantees by deconvoluting “subspace” information and “size-of- @math ” information in the input matrix. This technique is likely to be useful for other matrix approximation and data analysis problems. A number of problems in probability and statistics can be addressed using the multivariate normal (Gaussian) distribution. In the one-dimensional case, computing the probability for a given mean and variance simply requires the evaluation of the corresponding Gaussian density. In the @math -dimensional setting, however, it requires the inversion of an @math covariance matrix, @math , as well as the evaluation of its determinant, @math . In many cases, such as regression using Gaussian processes, the covariance matrix is of the form @math , where @math is computed using a specified covariance kernel which depends on the data and additional parameters (hyperparameters). The matrix @math is typically dense, causing standard direct methods for inversion and determinant evaluation to require @math work. This cost is prohibitive for large-scale modeling. Here, we show that for the most commonly used covariance functions, the matrix @math can be hierarchically factored into a product of block low-rank updates of the identity matrix, yielding an @math algorithm for inversion. More importantly, we show that this factorization enables the evaluation of the determinant @math , permitting the direct calculation of probabilities in high dimensions under fairly broad assumptions on the kernel defining @math . Our fast algorithm brings many problems in marginalization and the adaptation of hyperparameters within practical reach using a single CPU core. The combination of nearly optimal scaling in terms of problem size with high-performance computing resources will permit the modeling of previously intractable problems. We illustrate the performance of the scheme on standard covariance kernels. We study the problem of recovering a low-rank matrix @math from linear measurements using an over-parameterized model. We parameterize the rank- @math matrix @math by @math where @math is a square matrix, whereas the number of linear measurements is much less than @math . We show that with @math random linear measurements, the gradient descent on the squared loss, starting from a small initialization, recovers @math approximately in @math iterations. The results solve the conjecture of under the restricted isometry property, and demonstrate that the training algorithm can provide an implicit regularization for non-linear matrix factorization models. Suppose the complex matrix M is partitioned into a @math array of blocks; let @math . The generalized Schur complement of A in M is defined to be @math , where @math is the Moore–Penrose inverse of A. The relationship of the ranks of M, A, and @math is determined. A new proof, under certain conditions, of Sylvester’s determinantal formula is given. A quotient formula like one previously proved for the Schur complement is obtained. Finally, several known inequalities for positive semidefinite Hermitian matrices are generalized.