Hottopixx, proposed by Bittorf et al. at NIPS 2012, is an algorithm for solving nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) problems under the separability assumption. Separable NMFs have important applications, such as topic extraction from documents and unmixing of hyperspectral images. In such applications, the robustness of the algorithm to noise is the key to the success. Hottopixx has been shown to be robust to noise, and its robustness can be further enhanced through postprocessing. However, there is a drawback. Hottopixx and its postprocessing require us to estimate the noise level involved in the matrix we want to factorize before running, since they use it as part of the input data. The noise-level estimation is not an easy task. In this paper, we overcome this drawback. We present a refinement of Hottopixx and its postprocessing that runs without prior knowledge of the noise level. We show that the refinement has almost the same robustness to noise as the original algorithm.
Scalable methods for nonnegative matrix factorizations of near-separable tall-and-skinny matrices
Stanford University（斯坦福大学）；Purdue University（普渡大学）；Purdue University Institute for Computational and Bindley Biosciences Center（普渡大学计算与Bindley生物科学中心）；Computer Science Mathematical Engineering（计算机科学数学工程）
A Provably-Correct and Robust Convex Model for Smooth Separable NMF
Department of Mathematics, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong（香港 Baptist 大学数学系）；Institute of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, Innopolis University（Innopolis 大学数据科学与人工智能研究院）；Department of Mathematics and Operational Research, Université de Mons, Rue de Houdain 9, 7000 Mons, Belgium（蒙斯大学数学与运筹系）；European Research Council (ERC consolidator, eLinoR, no 101085607)（欧洲研究理事会（ERC consolidator, eLinoR, no 101085607））
Computing a Nonnegative Matrix Factorization -- Provably
Princeton University（普林斯顿大学）；Center for Computational Intractability（计算难解性中心）；Microsoft Research labs., India（微软研究院印度分院）；Institute for Advanced Study（高等研究院）
