On the Power of Adaptivity in Matrix Completion and Approximation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that adaptive sampling techniques significantly improve matrix completion and approximation tasks by removing traditional incoherence assumptions, leading to better sample complexity and efficiency.

Contribution

The authors introduce adaptive sampling algorithms that eliminate incoherence assumptions and outperform existing methods in matrix completion and approximation.

Findings

Exact recovery of low-rank matrices with fewer samples

Adaptive sampling removes row space incoherence assumptions

Algorithms achieve near-optimal approximation with fewer measurements

Abstract

We consider the related tasks of matrix completion and matrix approximation from missing data and propose adaptive sampling procedures for both problems. We show that adaptive sampling allows one to eliminate standard incoherence assumptions on the matrix row space that are necessary for passive sampling procedures. For exact recovery of a low-rank matrix, our algorithm judiciously selects a few columns to observe in full and, with few additional measurements, projects the remaining columns onto their span. This algorithm exactly recovers an $n \times n$ rank $r$ matrix using $O(nr\mu_0 \log^2(r))$ observations, where $\mu_0$ is a coherence parameter on the column space of the matrix. In addition to completely eliminating any row space assumptions that have pervaded the literature, this algorithm enjoys a better sample complexity than any existing matrix completion algorithm. To certify that this improvement is due to adaptive sampling, we establish that row space coherence is necessary for passive sampling algorithms to achieve non-trivial sample complexity bounds. For constructing a low-rank approximation to a high-rank input matrix, we propose a simple algorithm that thresholds the singular values of a zero-filled version of the input matrix. The algorithm computes an approximation that is nearly as good as the best rank-$r$ approximation using $O(nr\mu \log^2(n))$ samples, where $\mu$ is a slightly different coherence parameter on the matrix columns. Again we eliminate assumptions on the row space.