\documentclass{acm_proc_article-sp} \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} \usepackage{amsmath,amsfonts} \usepackage{algorithm} \usepackage{algpseudocode} \newtheorem{lemma}{Lemma} \newtheorem{fact}{Fact} \newtheorem{example}{Example} \newtheorem{prop}{Proposition} \newtheorem{theorem}{Theorem} \newcommand*{\defeq}{\stackrel{\text{def}}{=}} \newcommand{\var}{\mathop{\mathrm{Var}}} \newcommand{\condexp}[2]{\mathop{\mathbb{E}}\left[#1|#2\right]} \newcommand{\expt}[1]{\mathop{\mathbb{E}}\left[#1\right]} \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\lVert#1\rVert} \newcommand{\tr}[1]{#1^*} \newcommand{\ip}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle} \newcommand{\mse}{\mathop{\mathrm{MSE}}} \DeclareMathOperator{\trace}{tr} \DeclareMathOperator*{\argmax}{arg\,max} \title{Budgeted mechanism for optimal experiment design} \begin{document} \maketitle \section{Intro} \begin{itemize} \item already existing field of experiment design: survey-like setup, what are the best points to include in your experiment? Measure of the usefulness of the data: variance-reduction or entropy-reduction. \item nowadays, there is also a big focus on purchasing data: paid surveys, mechanical turk, etc. that add economic aspects to the problem of experiment design \item recent advances (Singer, Chen) in the field of budgeted mechanisms \item we study ridge regression, very widely used in statistical learning, and treat it as a problem of budgeted experiment design \item we make the following contributions: ... \item extension to a more general setup which includes a wider class of machine learning problems \end{itemize} \section{Problem formulation} \subsection{Notations} Throughout the paper, we will make use of the following notations: if $x$ is a (column) vector in $\mathbf{R}^d$, $x^*$ denotes its transposed (line) vector. Thus, the standard inner product between two vectors $x$ and $y$ is simply $x^* y$. $\norm{x}_2 = x^*x$ will denote the $L_2$ norm of $x$. We will also often use the following order over symmetric matrices: if $A$ and $B$ are two $d\times d$ and $B$ are two $d\times d$ real symmetric matrices, we write that $A\leq B$ iff: \begin{displaymath} \forall x\in\mathbf{R}^d,\quad x^*Ax \leq x^*Bx \end{displaymath} That is, iff $B-A$ is symmetric semi-definite positive. This order let us define the notion of a \emph{decreasing} or \emph{convex} matrix function similarly to their real counterparts. In particular, let us recall that the matrix inversion is decreasing and convex over symmetric definite positive matrices. \subsection{Data model} There is a set of $n$ users, $\mathcal{N} = \{1,\ldots, n\}$. Each user $i\in\mathcal{N}$ has a public vector of features $x_i\in\mathbf{R}^d$ and an undisclosed piece of information $y_i\in\mathbf{R}$. We assume that the data has already been normalized so that $\norm{x_i}_2\leq 1$ for all $i\in\mathcal{N}$. The experimenter is going to select a set of users and ask them to reveal their private piece of information. We are interested in a \emph{survey setup}: the experimenter has not seen the data yet, but he wants to know which users he should be selecting. His goal is to learn the model underlying the data. Here, we assume a linear model: \begin{displaymath} \forall i\in\mathcal{N},\quad y_i = \beta^* x_i + \varepsilon_i \end{displaymath} where $\beta\in\mathbf{R}^d$ and $\varepsilon_i\in\mathbf{R}$ follows a normal distribution of mean $0$ and variance $\sigma^2$. Furthermore, we assume the error $\varepsilon$ to be independent of the user: $(\varepsilon_i)_{i\in\mathcal{N}}$ are mutually independent. After observing the data, the experimenter could simply do linear regression to learn the model parameter $\beta$. However, in a more general setup, the experimenter has a prior knowledge about $\beta$, a distribution over $\mathbf{R}^d$. After observing the data, the experimenter performs \emph{maximum a posteriori estimation}: computing the point which maximizes the posterior distribution of $\beta$ given the observations. Here, we will assume, as it is often done, that the prior distribution is a multivariate normal distribution of mean zero and covariance matrix $\kappa I_d$. Maximum a posteriori estimation leads to the following maximization problem: \begin{displaymath} \beta_{\text{max}} = \argmax_{\beta\in\mathbf{R}^d} \sum_i (y_i - \beta^*x_i)^2 + \frac{1}{\mu}\sum_i \norm{\beta}_2^2 \end{displaymath} which is the well-known \emph{ridge regression}. $\mu = \frac{\kappa}{\sigma^2}$ is the regularization parameter. Ridge regression can thus be seen as linear regression with a regularization term which prevents $\beta$ from having a large $L_2$-norm. \subsection{Value of data} Because the user private variables $y_i$ have not been observed yet when the experimenter has to decide which users to include in his experiment, we treat $\beta$ as a random variable whose distribution is updated after observing the data. Let us recall that if $\beta$ is random variable over $\mathbf{R}^d$ whose probability distribution has a density function $f$ with respect to the Lebesgue measure, its entropy is given by: \begin{displaymath} \mathbb{H}(\beta) \defeq - \int_{b\in\mathbf{R}^d} \log f(b) f(b)\text{d}b \end{displaymath} A usual way to measure the decrease of uncertainty induced by the observation of data is to use the entropy. This leads to the following definition of the value of data called the \emph{value of information}: \begin{displaymath} \forall S\subset\mathcal{N},\quad V(S) = \mathbb{H}(\beta) - \mathbb{H}(\beta\,|\, Y_S) \end{displaymath} where $Y_S = \{y_i,\,i\in S\}$ is the set of observed data. \begin{theorem} Under the ridge regression model explained in section TODO, the value of data is equal to: \begin{align*} \forall S\subset\mathcal{N},\; V(S) & = \frac{1}{2}\log\det\left(I_d + \mu\sum_{i\in S} x_ix_i^*\right)\\ & \defeq \frac{1}{2}\log\det A(S) \end{align*} \end{theorem} \begin{proof} Let us denote by $X_S$ the matrix whose rows are the vectors $(x_i^*)_{i\in S}$. Observe that $A_S$ can simply be written as: \begin{displaymath} A_S = I_d + \mu X_S^* X_S \end{displaymath} Let us recall that the entropy of a multivariate normal variable $B$ over $\mathbf{R}^d$ of covariance $\Sigma I_d$ is given by: \begin{equation}\label{eq:multivariate-entropy} \mathbb{H}(B) = \frac{1}{2}\log\big((2\pi e)^d \det \Sigma I_d\big) \end{equation} Using the chain rule for conditional entropy, we get that: \begin{displaymath} V(S) = \mathbb{H}(Y_S) - \mathbb{H}(Y_S\,|\,\beta) \end{displaymath} Conditioned on $\beta$, $(Y_S)$ follows a multivariate normal distribution of mean $X\beta$ and of covariance matrix $\sigma^2 I_n$. Hence: \begin{equation}\label{eq:h1} \mathbb{H}(Y_S\,|\,\beta) = \frac{1}{2}\log\left((2\pi e)^n \det(\sigma^2I_n)\right) \end{equation} $(Y_S)$ also follows a multivariate normal distribution of mean zero. Let us compute its covariance matrix, $\Sigma_Y$: \begin{align*} \Sigma_Y & = \expt{YY^*} = \expt{(X_S\beta + E)(X_S\beta + E)^*}\\ & = \kappa X_S X_S^* + \sigma^2I_n \end{align*} Thus, we get that: \begin{equation}\label{eq:h2} \mathbb{H}(Y_S) = \frac{1}{2}\log\left((2\pi e)^n \det(\kappa X_S X_S^* + \sigma^2 I_n)\right) \end{equation} Combining \eqref{eq:h1} and \eqref{eq:h2} we get: \begin{displaymath} V(S) = \frac{1}{2}\log\det\left(I_n+\frac{\kappa}{\sigma^2}X_S X_S^*\right) \end{displaymath} Finally, we can use Sylvester's determinant theorem to get the result. \end{proof} It is also interesting to the marginal contribution of a user to a set: the increase of value induced by adding a user to an already existing set of users. We have the following lemma. \begin{lemma}[Marginal contribution] \begin{displaymath} \Delta_i V(S)\defeq V(S\cup\{i\}) - V(S) = \frac{1}{2}\log\left(1 + \mu x_i^*A(S)^{-1}x_i\right) \end{displaymath} \end{lemma} \begin{proof} We have: \begin{align*} V(S\cup\{i\}) & = \frac{1}{2}\log\det A(S\cup\{i\})\\ & = \frac{1}{2}\log\det\left(A(S) + \mu x_i x_i^*\right)\\ & = V(S) + \frac{1}{2}\log\det\left(I_d + \mu A(S)^{-1}x_i x_i^*\right)\\ & = V(S) + \frac{1}{2}\log\left(1 + \mu x_i^* A(S)^{-1}x_i\right) \end{align*} where the last equality comes from Sylvester's determinant formula. \end{proof} Because $A(S)$ is symmetric definite positive, the marginal contribution is positive, which proves that the value function is set increasing. Furthermore, it is easy to see that if $S\subset S'$, then $A(S)\leq A(S')$. Using the fact that matrix inversion is decreasing, we see that the marginal contribution of a fixed user is a set decreasing function. This is the \emph{submodularity} of the value function. \subsection{Auction} Explain the optimization problem, why it has to be formulated as an auction problem. Explain the goals: \begin{itemize} \item truthful \item individually rational \item budget feasible \item has a good approximation ratio \end{itemize} \section{Main result} Explain: \begin{itemize} \item the mechanism uses the greedy heuristic \item we know that the maximum of greedy and meatiest guy is a good approximation, but not incentive compatible \item instead compare the value of the meatiest guy to $L(x^*)$ (introduce $L(x^*)$ which can be easily computed and is not too far from the greedy value \end{itemize} \begin{algorithm}\label{mechanism} \caption{Mechanism for ridge regression} \begin{algorithmic}[1] \State $i^* \gets \argmax_{j\in\mathcal{N}}V(j)$ \State $x^* \gets \argmax_{x\in[0,1]^n} \{L_{\mathcal{N}\setminus\{i^*\}}(x) \,|\, c(x)\leq B\}$ \Statex \If{$L(x^*) < CV(i^*)$} \State \textbf{return} $\{i^*\}$ \Else \State $i \gets \argmax_{1\leq j\leq n}\frac{V(j)}{c_j}$ \State $S \gets \emptyset$ \While{$c_i\leq \frac{B}{2}\frac{V(S\cup\{i\})-V(S)}{V(S\cup\{i\})}$} \State $S \gets S\cup\{i\}$ \State $i \gets \argmax_{j\in\mathcal{N}\setminus S} \frac{V(S\cup\{j\})-V(S)}{c_j}$ \EndWhile \State \textbf{return} $S$ \EndIf \end{algorithmic} \end{algorithm} \begin{theorem} The mechanism is truthful, individually rational, budget feasible. Furthermore, choosing: \begin{multline*} C = C^* = \frac{5e-1 + C_\mu(2e+1)}{2C_\mu(e-1)}\\ + \frac{\sqrt{C_\mu^2(1+2e)^2 + 2C_\mu(14e^2+5e+1) + (1-5e)^2}}{2C_\mu(e-1)} \end{multline*} we get an approximation ratio of: \begin{multline*} 1 + C^* = \frac{5e-1 + C_\mu(4e-1)}{2C_\mu(e-1)}\\ + \frac{\sqrt{C_\mu^2(1+2e)^2 + 2C_\mu(14e^2+5e+1) + (1-5e)^2}}{2C_\mu(e-1)} \end{multline*} \end{theorem} \section{General setup} \section{Conclusion} \end{document}