Journal Article

A Computational Framework for Multivariate Convex Regression and Its Variants

Choudhury, Arkopal, Sen, Bodhisattva, Mazumder, Rahul, Iyengar, Garud

2019

Overview

We study the nonparametric least squares estimator (LSE) of a multivariate convex regression function. The LSE, given as the solution to a quadratic program with O(n 2 ) linear constraints (n being the sample size), is difficult to compute for large problems. Exploiting problem specific structure, we propose a scalable algorithmic framework based on the augmented Lagrangian method to compute the LSE. We develop a novel approach to obtain smooth convex approximations to the fitted (piecewise affine) convex LSE and provide formal bounds on the quality of approximation. When the number of samples is not too large compared to the dimension of the predictor, we propose a regularization scheme-Lipschitz convex regression-where we constrain the norm of the subgradients, and study the rates of convergence of the obtained LSE. Our algorithmic framework is simple and flexible and can be easily adapted to handle variants: estimation of a nondecreasing/nonincreasing convex/concave (with or without a Lipschitz bound) function. We perform numerical studies illustrating the scalability of the proposed algorithm-on some instances our proposal leads to more than a 10,000-fold improvement in runtime when compared to off-the-shelf interior point solvers for problems with n = 500.

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis,Taylor & Francis Group,LLC,Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subject: Algorithms / Augmented Lagrangian method / Convergence / equations / Lipschitz convex regression / Nonparametric least squares estimator / Nonparametric statistics / quadratic programming / Regression / Regression analysis / Regularization / Scalable quadratic programming / Smooth convex regression / Solvers / Statistical methods / Statistics / Theory and Methods / Variants