BLOC: A Global Optimization Framework for Sparse Covariance Estimation with Non-Convex Penalties
BLOC:非凸惩罚稀疏协方差估计的全局优化框架
We introduce BLOC (Black-box Optimization over Correlation matrices), a general framework for sparse covariance estimation with non-convex penalties. BLOC operates on the manifold of correlation matrices and reparameterizes it via an angular Cholesky mapping, transforming the positive-definite, unit-diagonal constraint into an unconstrained search over a Euclidean hyperrectangle. This enables gradient-free global optimization of diverse objectives, including…