Learning Gaussian Mixtures with Generalised Linear Models: Precise Asymptotics in High-dimensions

Bruno Loureiro, Gabriele Sicuro, Cédric Gerbelot, Alessandro Pacco, Florent Krzakala, Lenka Zdeborová

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference paperpeer-review

29 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Generalised linear models for multi-class classification problems are one of the fundamental building blocks of modern machine learning tasks. In this manuscript, we characterise the learning of a mixture of K Gaussians with generic means and covariances via empirical risk minimisation (ERM) with any convex loss and regularisation. In particular, we prove exact asymptotics characterising the ERM estimator in high-dimensions, extending several previous results about Gaussian mixture classification in the literature. We exemplify our result in two tasks of interest in statistical learning: a) classification for a mixture with sparse means, where we study the efficiency of ℓ1 penalty with respect to ℓ2; b) max-margin multiclass classification, where we characterise the phase transition on the existence of the multi-class logistic maximum likelihood estimator for K > 2. Finally, we discuss how our theory can be applied beyond the scope of synthetic data, showing that in different cases Gaussian mixtures capture closely the learning curve of classification tasks in real data sets.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAdvances in Neural Information Processing Systems 34 - 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, NeurIPS 2021
EditorsMarc'Aurelio Ranzato, Alina Beygelzimer, Yann Dauphin, Percy S. Liang, Jenn Wortman Vaughan
PublisherNeural information processing systems foundation
Pages10144-10157
Number of pages14
ISBN (Electronic)9781713845393
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Event35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, NeurIPS 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: 6 Dec 202114 Dec 2021

Publication series

NameAdvances in Neural Information Processing Systems
Volume13
ISSN (Print)1049-5258

Conference

Conference35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, NeurIPS 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period6/12/202114/12/2021

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Learning Gaussian Mixtures with Generalised Linear Models: Precise Asymptotics in High-dimensions'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this