Regularization in High-Dimensional Regression and Classification via Random Matrix Theory

Abstract: We study general singular value shrinkage estimators in high-dimensional regression and classification, when the number of features and the sample size both grow proportionally to infinity. We allow models with general covariance matrices that include a large class of data generating distributions. As far as the implications of our results are concerned, we find exact asymptotic formulas for both the training and test errors in regression models fitted by gradient descent, which provides theoretical insights for early stopping as a regularization method. In addition, we propose a numerical method based on the empirical spectra of covariance matrices for the optimal eigenvalue shrinkage classifier in linear discriminant analysis. Finally, we derive optimal estimators for the dense mean vectors of high-dimensional distributions. Throughout our analysis we rely on recent advances in random matrix theory and develop further results of independent mathematical interest.