Paper:
On Fast Leverage Score Sampling and Optimal Learning
Leverage score sampling provides an appealing way to perform approximate computations for large matrices. Indeed, it allows to derive faithful approximations with a complexity adapted to the problem at hand. Yet, performing leverage scores sampling is a challenge in its own right requiring further approximations. In this paper, we study the problem of leverage score sampling for positive definite matrices defined by a kernel. Our contribution is twofold. First we provide a novel algorithm for leverage score sampling and second, we exploit the proposed method in statistical learning by deriving a novel solver for kernel ridge regression. Our main technical contribution is showing that the proposed algorithms are currently the most efficient and accurate for these problems.

Review:
After Author Response:  Thanks to the authors for their various clarifications.  After further thought, however, I have updated my review to a 5.  While this works seems to have very high potential, the current draft has several important shortcomings: (1) It is not yet polished enough for broad consumption.  Significant revisions would be necessary to increase clarity.  (2) The empirical section could be significantly improved; in particular, the experiments should be used to more directly validate the claims from the theorems, and to disentangle the issues related to faster optimization vs. improved final model --- this discussion should also be much more prominent. ===================================== Summary: This paper presents a novel algorithm for estimating leverage scores for kernel matrices.  The running time of this algorithm improves upon state of the art.  This algorithm is based on choosing samples of ever increasing size with which to approximate the leverage scores.  These approximate leverage scores are then used to choose the Nystrom centers in the FALKON algorithm [1] (this method is named FALKON-LSG). The paper proves that given this choice of centers, FALKON-LSG achieves optimal learning rates (like FALKON does) but with improved runtime.  It validates the quality of the estimated leverage scores, the runtime of their algorithm, and the accuracy of FALKON-LSG, empirically.  The experiments show that FALKON-LSG converges faster than the original FALKON, though the two algorithms generally converge to very similar final test accuracies.  I will now summarize the quality, clarity, originality, and significance of the work: 1) Quality: The general quality of the work seems high to me (though I have not checked the proofs).  My primary concerns over the quality of the work are: -- There appear to be a fair number of careless mistakes throughout the paper, both in terms of the math and the text (these are listed at the end of the review).  This makes me concerned that perhaps that proofs also have careless mistakes scattered throughout, which would suggest that the work isn't yet polished enough for publication. -- One of the primary theoretical claims of the paper is that this new algorithm for leverage score sampling allows for achieving the same generalization performance as FALKON and exact kernel ridge regression, but with improved running time.  In particular, the claim appears to be that only O(d_eff) Nystrom centers need to be sampled (using approximate leverage scores) to achieve the same generalization performance as sqrt(n) Nystrom centers with the standard FALKON algorithm; given that d_eff is often significantly smaller than sqrt(n), this suggests that FALKON-LSG can use far fewer centers to achieve the same accuracy as FALKON.  However, this claim is not validated empirically.  In fact, the paper states that FALKON-LSG and standard FALKON converge to very similar test accuracy, using the same number of centers.  This raises questions about when/why this algorithm would be of practical importance.  It would have been informative to see a plot, with the x axis as the number of Nystrom centers, and the y axis as test performance (at convergence), for FALKON-LSG and FALKON.  One thing the experiments *do show*, however, is that FALKON-LSG converges **faster** than FALKON; but this is a bit confusing, given that the rate of convergence was not something the theory addressed in any way.  The paper does not dig into why this might be the case.  It also shows FALKON-LSG is more robust to the choice of regularizer \lambda than FALKON, but this also isn't explained.  2) Clarity: If I were to ignore the list of small errors (in math and text) summarized below, I would say the paper is in general quite clear.  But unfortunately, the presence of all these small issues made the paper somewhat laborious to get through.  On the bright side, these issues could be fixed quite quickly.  Some more minor comments: - Lines 137-138: I would have liked a more careful explanation of the time and space bounds. - In plots, legends and axis labels have tiny text.  3) Originality: The work is original, giving two new algorithms for leverage score sampling, and proving that these algorithms can achieve the same leverage score approximation error as existing algorithms, but can do so asymptotically faster.  Furthermore, it presents a way of using these approximate leverage scores in the supervised learning setting (regression with least squares loss) in order to achieve optimal rates asymptotically faster than existing work.  4) Significance: From a theoretical perspective, the work is definitely significant.  The paper presents the fastest known algorithm for achieving optimal learning rates for kernel ridge regression.  However, it remains unclear what the practical significance of the work is, given that the paper was unable to show improved test performance over FALKON for a fixed number of Nystrom centers.  [1] Alessandro Rudi, Luigi Carratino, Lorenzo Rosasco: FALKON: An Optimal Large Scale Kernel Method. NIPS 2017.  ========================================================================== Mathematical issues found in paper: - Line 53: Isn't d_eff bounded above by n, not sqrt(n)?  For example, when lambda is infinitesimal Tr(KK^(-1)) = n. - Line 61: The RLS of sample x_i seems to be an indication of how orthogonal phi(x_i) is, not x_i.  I think this was meant as an informal statement, so not a huge deal. - Line 73: It says "corresponds exactly to \tilde{l}", and should say "corresponds exactly to l". - Line 77: |D| not defined.  It seems |D| = |J|. - Algorithm 1: --- l(x_u, lambda) should be l(u,lambda) --- R_h as defined doesn't depend on h.  I believe it should be R_h = q_1 min(\kappa^2/ \lambda_h, n). - Lines 89-90: The summary of lemma 3 is incorrect.  Should be \lambda_h \leq \lambda_{h-1} \Rightarrow l(i, \lambda_h) \leq (\lambda_{h-1}/\lambda_h) l(i,\lambda_{h-1}). - Lines 101-102: Should be O(n M_{h-1}^2).  I would then specify that this is made more efficient by only computing the approximate leverage scores for R_h points, which takes O(R_h M_{h-1}^2) time. - Algorithm 2: --- Failure probability \delta is taken as input but never used. --- Line 3: \lambda_h / q.  What is q?  Only q_1 and q_2 are defined as inputs. --- Line 4: q_1 q / (\lambda_h n).  Once again, what is q? --- Line 6: uniform in what range?  I assume [0,1] --- Line 8: Shouldn't it be min(\beta_h, ...), not min(1, ...)?  This would ensure that p_{h,i}/\beta_h in [0,1]. - Lines 113-118.  h-1 and h are confused in many places.  computing l_{D_{h-1}} requires inverting (K_{J_{h-1}} + \lambda_{h-1}n I), which costs M_{h-1}^3 time, and each of the R_h evaluations takes M_{h-1}^2 time. So Algorithm 1 runs in time O( \sum_{h=1}^H M_{h-1}^3 + R_h M_{h-1}^2) time. - Lines 113-118: I found the derivation of the time and space bounds confusing.  Shouldn't time bound be something like O(\sum_h \lambda_h^{-3})  (and then this should be simplified to be in terms of \lambda). - As written, algorithm 1 returns  (M_h, J_h, A_h), and algorithm 2 returns (J_h, A_h) for h \in {1,...,H}.  This inconsistency is weird.  Also, it seems like the output of these algorithms should simply be (J_H,A_H), the LSG from the final iteration.  This seems to be the way algorithm 3 uses the LSG algorithm in line 1. Another inconsistency is that Algorithm 2 takes as input a failure probability delta (which is never used), and Algorithm 1 doesn't. - Algorithm 3: --- Line 1: "(J,A) = LSG-Alg(X,\lambda,K) with approximation factor T = 2 and step q = 2".  As mentioned above, (J,A) as output of the algorithm currently doesn't type check.  Also, algorithms 1 and 2 require as input {q_1, q_2, \lambda_0}, not {T, q}. - line 172 and Eq (2): Should 'H' be used instead of 'h'?  Issues in text: NIT - In many places, "leverage scores sampling" and "leverage scores generators" is written.  It seems grammatically it should be "leverage score sampling" and "leverage score generators". - Two broken references on page 1 (lines 17 and 31). - Line 42: establish --> establishes - Line 44: "Our second, contribution..." --- comma after "second" is unnecessary. - Algorithm 2 title: Regection --> Rejection. - Line 112: mimik --> mimic. - Algorithm 3: broken equation reference "Eq. ??" - line 122: create --> creates. - line 160: "consists in a efficient" ---> "consists of an efficient". - line 190: "standard basic" --> "standard". - line 208: Broken theorem reference "Thm. ??" - line 209: "In Thm" --  Thm number not specified. - line 256: "Nystromcentres" --> "Nystrom centers". - Figures: --- Unit of time not specified in Figure 1. --- Figure 1 is actually a table (should be Table 2) --- The RLS accuracy box plot should be a separate figure with its own caption probably. --- Instead of calling the proposed algorithms "BLESS" and "BLESS-R" as these methods are called throughout the text, it says "Opt LS" and "REJLS".  This is confusing.  Also, RRLS is called Musco in two of the plots, which is also confusing.