The Landscape of the Spiked Tensor Model
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We consider the problem of estimating a large rank‐one tensor u⊗k ∈ (ℝn)⊗k, k ≥ 3, in Gaussian noise. Earlier work characterized a critical signal‐to‐noise ratio λ Bayes = O(1) above which an ideal estimator achieves strictly positive correlation with the unknown vector of interest. Remarkably, no polynomial‐time algorithm is known that achieved this goal unless λ ≥ Cn(k − 2)/4, and even powerful semidefinite programming relaxations appear to fail for 1 ≪ λ ≪ n(k − 2)/4. In order to elucidate this behavior, we consider the maximum likelihood estimator, which requires maximizing a degree‐k homogeneous polynomial over the unit sphere in n dimensions. We compute the expected number of critical points and local maxima of this objective function and show that it is exponential in the dimensions n, and give exact formulas for the exponential growth rate. We show that (for λ larger than a constant) critical points are either very close to the unknown vector u or are confined in a band of width Θ(λ−1/(k − 1)) around the maximum circle that is orthogonal to u. For local maxima, this band shrinks to be of size Θ(λ−1/(k − 2)). These “uninformative” local maxima are likely to cause the failure of optimization algorithms. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".