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Submitted by
Assigned_Reviewer_5
Q1: Comments to author(s).
First provide a summary of the paper, and then address the following
criteria: Quality, clarity, originality and significance. (For detailed
reviewing guidelines, see
http://nips.cc/PaperInformation/ReviewerInstructions)
The paper presents a iterative algorithm to a robust
principal component matrix factorization. The data is modeled as a sum of
a low rank matrix approximation and a sparse noise matrix. Constraining
the norms of the row and column factors of the former part of the sum
allows to implement the nuclear norm minimization of the batch robust pca
algorithm in an online stochastic gradient descent fashion.
The
approach taken by the authors resembles very much the approach taken by
Marial et al 2009 (ICML) and 2010 (JMLR), only that the objective is
slightly different (Robust PCA was not dealt with in the JMLR version).
One difference between the JMLR and the ICML version is that a standard
stochastic gradient version of the objective function did not perform as
well as the proposed online dictionary learning approach (in which the
statistics of the data are accumulated in the matrices A and B) in the
ICML version, but in the JMLR version, a standard stochastic gradient
implementation with appropriately chosen learning rate seemed to perform
ok. As storing and updating the matrices A and B can be costly, it would
be interesting to see whether a standard first order or quasi-newton
stochastic gradient approach for optimizing eq. (2) performs as well as
the solution proposed in algorithms 1 and 2.
Quality The
manuscript is very well written.
Clarity All parts of the
manuscript appear to be very accessible. Problem formulation and
motivation for the method are clear, objective function and the algorithm
are comprehensible. Simulations are sensible and well done.
Originality The approach proposed by the authors seems very
similar to the one proposed by Marial et al in their 2009 and 2010 paper.
The proofs appear to be based on the same techniques, in large parts.
Convergence to a global optimum instead of a local optimum is new.
Using a low-norm factorization instead of a batch version of nuclear
norm minimization is fairly well established, see e.g. Rennie and Srebro,
'Fast Maximum Margin Matrix Factorization for Collaborative Prediction',
ICML, 2005.
Significance Iterative methods are becoming more
relevant with growing data set sizes. It is important to have scalable
versions of simple methods such as PCA and robust versions thereof for
large scale data sets. Although the ingredients are well known, to the
best of my knowledge, the proposed method is novel and potentially
relevant to a large part of the research community.
Q2: Please summarize your review in 1-2 sentences
The paper presents a iterative algorithm to a robust
principal component matrix factorization. The data is modeled as a sum of
a low-norm low rank matrix approximation and a sparse noise matrix. The
basic algorithm as well as the idea of low-norm low-rank matrix
factorizations are not new. However the algorithm as well as the
theoretical result could be interesting to a large
community. Submitted by
Assigned_Reviewer_6
Q1: Comments to author(s).
First provide a summary of the paper, and then address the following
criteria: Quality, clarity, originality and significance. (For detailed
reviewing guidelines, see
http://nips.cc/PaperInformation/ReviewerInstructions)
The paper presents an online algorithm for robust PCA
(RPCA) by reformulating the optimization problem using an equivalent
formulation of nuclear norm. The writing can be improved.
My main
concern was with the reformulation of the robust PCA problem which is at
the heart of this paper. Having seen the authors' response and discussing
the issue with other reviewers, and digging into some previous literature,
I believe the math does go through, i.e. the robust PCA problem in
equation (1) is indeed equivalent to the optimization problem in equation
(2). However, I strongly recommend writing that part carefully and citing
"Rennie and Srebro, Fast Maximum Margin Matrix Factorization for
Collaborative Prediction, ICML, 2005" which was also suggested by one of
the other reviewers -- the result that the authors need can be found
clearly stated in that paper.
Q2: Please
summarize your review in 1-2 sentences
The paper presents an online algorithm for robust PCA
(RPCA) by reformulating the optimization problem using an equivalent form
of nuclear norm.
Submitted by
Assigned_Reviewer_7
Q1: Comments to author(s).
First provide a summary of the paper, and then address the following
criteria: Quality, clarity, originality and significance. (For detailed
reviewing guidelines, see
http://nips.cc/PaperInformation/ReviewerInstructions)
The paper provides a novel online algorithm for sparse
PCA and contributes some theoretical guarantees on the convergence of the
algorithm. These are achieved by rewriting the batch problem as a convex
optimisation one using the nuclear norm (Principal component pursuit), and
by then showing that the online problem (which is not convex naively) is
equivalent to a convex one (in the sense that the solutions of the non
convex problem correspond to solutions of an alternative convex one). In
general, I found the paper well written and I could follow it despite not
being an expert in the field. The paper did feel a bit incremental, but
the theoretical guarantees are certainly a good point in favour of its
quality. The experimental evaluation also seemed thorough and certainly
there is considerable motivation for developing algorithms along these
lines, which argues for the significance of the
paper. Q2: Please summarize your review in 1-2
sentences
A good paper describing a novel online robust version
of possibly the most popular data analysis algorithm,
PCA. Submitted by
Assigned_Reviewer_8
Q1: Comments to author(s).
First provide a summary of the paper, and then address the following
criteria: Quality, clarity, originality and significance. (For detailed
reviewing guidelines, see
http://nips.cc/PaperInformation/ReviewerInstructions)
This paper proposes to solve the Low-rank+Sparse
approximation problem in an online fashion. One problem with the Principal
Component Pursuit algorithm is in order to get a hold on the nuclear norm
of the low rank part, one has to feed the algorithm with a batch of
samples. The trick in the paper is to use an variational expression of the
nuclear norm by introducing additional variables (basis times coefficient)
as a “decoupling”. Then the optimization is divided into two phases:
1. fix the basis, and solve a convex programming 2. fix the
coefficient and the sparse part, and then update the basis using block
coordinate descent with warm start, which is very similar to the online
dictionary learning proposed by Mairal et. al. The authors are also
able to prove an asymptotic global convergence guarantee of the algorithm.
To me this is definitely a great paper with both nice theoretical
analysis and extensive empirical evaluation. The idea to introduce the
variational expression and decouple the problem into the online
formulation is very clever. Below are some suggestions and questions:
1. line 282: it looks to me the term \lambda_1 L should not appear on
the right hand side. 2. line 267: the condition “if
e^\star_{\Lambda}\neq 0” is a little bit confusing to me: According to the
definition of \Lambda in line 271, e^\star_{\Lambda} should not equal 0. I
don’t understand why you put the “if” there. 3. Theorem 1 and 6 prove
that if the solution L produced by the algorithm is full rank, then it is
the optimal asymptotically. On the other hand, L is an auxiliary variable
matrix that does not appear in the original objective of PCP. Is there any
guarantee when the produced L is full rank?
Below are some
possible typos in the supplementary: 1. Proof of Lemma 3 in the
appendix should be Proof of Lemma 2. 2. Some expressions
\tilde{f}(r,e,z,L) in the Proof of Lemma 2 miss the “tilde”. 3. Again
the term \lambda_1 L should not appear in one equation in the proof of
Lemma 2. Correct me if I am wrong. 4. (8.1) the minimization is with
respect to L, R and E 5. (8.1) the middle term is missing \lambda_1
Q2: Please summarize your review in 1-2
sentences
The idea to introduce the variational expression and
decouple the problem into the online formulation is clever. If nobody has
done that before, this paper should be accepted.
Q1:Author
rebuttal: Please respond to any concerns raised in the reviews. There are
no constraints on how you want to argue your case, except for the fact
that your text should be limited to a maximum of 6000 characters. Note
however that reviewers and area chairs are very busy and may not read long
vague rebuttals. It is in your own interest to be concise and to the
point.
We thank all reviewers for their constructive
suggestions and insightful comments.
The main critique we receive
is about the correctness of Equation (2), from reviewer 6. Indeed the
reviewer has some misunderstanding, and we hereby clarify the rationale of
our reformulation from Eq.(1) to Eq.(2).
The first issue is
whether we can fix the size of L and R. For a low rank matrix X whose rank
is upper bounded by r, it can be factorized as X = LR’ in its nuclear
reformulation, with size of L fixed as m by r and R as n by r. Namely,
\|X\|_* = \min_{L \in R^{m x r}, R \in R^{n x r}, X=LR’} 1/2*(\|L\|_F^2 +
\|R\|_F^2). This equivalent reformulation, known as low-rank
factorization, is developed in (Burer and Monteiro, Math. Progam. 2003)
and has been adopted in previous works (e.g., see Sec. 5.3 in B. Recht,
SIAM review 2010 and proof therein). The comment from Reviewer 6 that the
size of factors L and R cannot be fixed is not correct.
Indeed,
when we wrote the reformulation in line 147, we meant the minimization is
over L of fixed size n by r and R of m by r, following (Recht, 2010). The
size constraint is stated in line 149. Reviewer 6 may misunderstand that
line 147 is over all possible L and R. We will put this size constraint
explicitly in line 147 and Eq. (2), to avoid any possible confusion.
The second issue is the correctness of (2). Reviewer 6 argues that
after replacing the variable X with LR’, the constraint X =LR’ cannot be
dropped. This is incorrect. Here we give a step-by-step derivation from
(1) to (2) to clarify it: 1. The original problem is \min_X
\|Z-X-E\|_F+\|X\|_* +\|E\|_1, as in (1);
2. Recall \|X\|_* =
min_{L \in R^{m x r}, R \in R^{n x r}} 1/2*(\|L\|_F^2 + \|R\|_F^2), s.t.
X=LR’;
3. Substituting the above to (1) yields \min_{X, L, R}}
\|Z-X-E\|_2 + (\|L\|^2_F + \|R\|^2_F)/2 +\|E\|_1 , s.t. X=LR’;
4.
Substituting the constraint X=LR’ into the objective yields \min_{L, R}}
\|Z-LR’-E\|_2 + (\|L\|^2_F + \|R\|^2_F)/2 +\|E\|_1. This is exactly what
is given in (2).
Based on the above explanation, we have to say
that Reviewer 6 misunderstands the critical formulation, and gives
improper assessment on this paper based on that.
Followings are
the point-to-point replies to the reviewers’ other comments.
To
reviewer 5 Q1. … it would be interesting to apply a standard
stochastic gradient approach for optimizing (2)
A1. We agree with
that standard stochastic gradient (SG) may further enhance the
computational efficiency. Using current method is motivated by its global
convergence guarantee, which may not hold for the standard SG method. The
investigation of the SG will be left for future research.
Q2.
Using a low-rank factorization is fairly well established, see e.g. Rennie
and Srebro.
A2. Thanks for pointing out the related work, which we
will cite and discuss.
To Reviewer 6
Q1. The computational
complexity is O(pr^2). It is not clear how. What is the computational
complexity of step 2 in Alg. 1? How does step 2 scale with p and r?
A1. In step 2, we apply gradient descent, whose complexity is
O(r^2+pr+r^3). Here O(r^3) is for computing L^TL. Thus, step 2 scales
linear in p and cubic in r. The complexity of step 3 is O(r^2+pr). For
step 4 (i.e. Alg.2), the cost is O(pr^2) (updating each column of L
requires O(pr) and there are r columns in total). Thus the total
complexity is O(r^2+pr+r^3+pr^2). Since p >> r, the overall
complexity is O(pr^2). We will provide the above details in the revision.
Q2. Compared with batch PCP, the speed-up brought by OR-PCA is
p/r^2, considering the iteration needed in the optimization.
A2.
If the iteration complexity of batch PCP is O(1), we agree with that the
speedup brought by OR-PCA is p/r^2. Note that when comparing OR-PCA with
batch PCP, we are more concerned about the *memory cost*. For batch PCP,
all data must be loaded into memory. In contrast, OR-PCA processes the
data sequentially and the memory cost is independent of dataset size. This
is important for big data.
Q3. The comparison in terms of the
runtime can be misleading as there may be many factors affecting it …what
one should plot is how much runtime was needed to reach a certain
objective.
A3. In the simulations, we have controlled all the
factors to ensure the comparison is fair, e.g., the baseline was
implemented using the optimized code from the authors, and we used the
same initialization for the methods.
Reviewer may not notice that
we also provide the final performance of the compared methods in Table 1.
It shows that OR-PCA costs less time for convergence and achieves better
final performance than baseline. For example, from the first column,
OR-PCA takes 13 seconds to achieve E.V. = 0.99 but baseline costs 23
seconds for E.V. = 0.54. We also give the average and variance of the
results from 5 repetitions to show OR-PCA consistently outperforms
baselines.
Q4. There are faster and more efficient PCA algorithms
… A4. This work focuses on developing online *Robust* PCA. The
non-robustness of (online) PCA is independent of used optimization method.
Thus, implementing the basic online PCA method is enough for comparing
robustness.
To reviewer 7 We thank your positive comments on
this paper very much.
To reviewer 9
Thanks a lot for
pointing out the typos in the paper and supplementary material. We will
revise them thoroughly.
Q1. Is there any guarantee when the
produced L is full rank?
A1. We need to pre-define the size of
matrix L. If the number of L’s columns is equal to the true rank of the
underlying subspace, the produced L will be full rank.
Q2. line
267, the condition if e^\star_{\lambda} \neq 0 is confusing.
A2.
Yes, the “if” is not necessary given the definition of \lambda.
Q3. line 282: it looks to me the term \lambda_1 L should not
appear on the right hand side. A3. Yes, this is a typo. Also in the
proof of Lemma 2, \lambda L should not appear. Thanks for pointing out
this.
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