Exact Matrix Completion via Convex Optimization

We consider a problem of considerable practical interest: the recovery of a data matrix from a sampling of its entries. Suppose that we observe m entries selected uniformly at random from a matrix M. Can we complete the matrix and recover the entries that we have not seen? We show that one can perfectly recover most low-rank matrices from what appears to be an incomplete set of entries. We prove that if the number m of sampled entries obeys $$m\ge C\,n^{1.2}r\log n$$ for some positive numerical constant C, then with very high probability, most n×n matrices of rank r can be perfectly recovered by solving a simple convex optimization program. This program finds the matrix with minimum nuclear norm that fits the…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• OO
  Office of Naval Research