K-Median Clustering, Model-Based Compressive Sensing, and Sparse Recovery for Earth Mover Distance

We initiate the study of sparse recovery problems under the Earth-Mover Distance (EMD). Specifically, we design a distribution over m × n matrices A such that for any x, given Ax, we can recover a k-sparse approximation to x under the EMD distance. One construction yields m = O(k log(n/k)) and a 1 + approximation factor, which matches the best achievable bound for other error measures, such as the 1 norm. Our algorithms are obtained by exploiting novel connections to other problems and areas, such as streaming algorithms for k-median clustering and model-based compressive sensing. We also provide novel algorithms and results for the latter problems.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: CORR
• Authors: Piotr Indyk, Eric Price
• Keywords: CORR 2011, Education, Model-based Compressive Sensing, Problems, Sparse Recovery Problems