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Robust Grouped Variable Selection Using Distributionally Robust Optimization

Author

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  • Ruidi Chen

    (Boston University)

  • Ioannis Ch. Paschalidis

    (Boston University)

Abstract

We propose a distributionally robust optimization formulation with a Wasserstein-based uncertainty set for selecting grouped variables under perturbations on the data for both linear regression and classification problems. The resulting model offers robustness explanations for grouped least absolute shrinkage and selection operator algorithms and highlights the connection between robustness and regularization. We prove probabilistic bounds on the out-of-sample loss and the estimation bias, and establish the grouping effect of our estimator, showing that coefficients in the same group converge to the same value as the sample correlation between covariates approaches 1. Based on this result, we propose to use the spectral clustering algorithm with the Gaussian similarity function to perform grouping on the predictors, which makes our approach applicable without knowing the grouping structure a priori. We compare our approach to an array of alternatives and provide extensive numerical results on both synthetic data and a real large dataset of surgery-related medical records, showing that our formulation produces an interpretable and parsimonious model that encourages sparsity at a group level and is able to achieve better prediction and estimation performance in the presence of outliers.

Suggested Citation

  • Ruidi Chen & Ioannis Ch. Paschalidis, 2022. "Robust Grouped Variable Selection Using Distributionally Robust Optimization," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 194(3), pages 1042-1071, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:joptap:v:194:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10957-022-02065-4
    DOI: 10.1007/s10957-022-02065-4
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Lukas Meier & Sara Van De Geer & Peter Bühlmann, 2008. "The group lasso for logistic regression," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 70(1), pages 53-71, February.
    2. Joel Goh & Melvyn Sim, 2010. "Distributionally Robust Optimization and Its Tractable Approximations," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 58(4-part-1), pages 902-917, August.
    3. Erick Delage & Yinyu Ye, 2010. "Distributionally Robust Optimization Under Moment Uncertainty with Application to Data-Driven Problems," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 58(3), pages 595-612, June.
    4. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Addendum: Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(5), pages 768-768, November.
    5. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(2), pages 301-320, April.
    6. Ming Yuan & Yi Lin, 2006. "Model selection and estimation in regression with grouped variables," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 68(1), pages 49-67, February.
    7. Dariush Khezrimotlagh & Yao Chen, 2018. "The Optimization Approach," International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, in: Decision Making and Performance Evaluation Using Data Envelopment Analysis, chapter 0, pages 107-134, Springer.
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