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Poster
Learning Sparse Distributions using Iterative Hard Thresholding
Jacky Zhang · Rajiv Khanna · Anastasios Kyrillidis · Sanmi Koyejo

Thu Dec 12 10:45 AM -- 12:45 PM (PST) @ East Exhibition Hall B + C #202
in Optimization -- Non-Convex Optimization »

Iterative hard thresholding (IHT) is a projected gradient descent algorithm, known to achieve state of the art performance for a wide range of structured estimation problems, such as sparse inference. In this work, we consider IHT as a solution to the problem of learning sparse discrete distributions. We study the hardness of using IHT on the space of measures. As a practical alternative, we propose a greedy approximate projection which simultaneously captures appropriate notions of sparsity in distributions, while satisfying the simplex constraint, and investigate the convergence behavior of the resulting procedure in various settings. Our results show, both in theory and practice, that IHT can achieve state of the art results for learning sparse distributions.

Keywords: Probabilistic Methods · Algorithms -> Density Estimation; Optimization -> Combinatorial Optimization; Optimization · Non-Convex Optimization; Theory -
[ Paper]  [ Poster] 

Author Information

Jacky Zhang (UIUC)
Rajiv Khanna (University of California at Berkeley)
Anastasios Kyrillidis (Rice University)
Sanmi Koyejo (UIUC)
Sanmi Koyejo

Sanmi Koyejo an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University. Koyejo also spends time at Google as a part of the Brain team. Koyejo's research interests are in developing the principles and practice of trustworthy machine learning. Additionally, Koyejo focuses on applications to neuroscience and healthcare. Koyejo has been the recipient of several awards, including a best paper award from the conference on uncertainty in artificial intelligence (UAI), a Skip Ellis Early Career Award, and a Sloan Fellowship. Koyejo serves as the president of the Black in AI organization.

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