Sparse pursuit after dictionary learning can yield a precise atom support even when its physical interpretation is not justified by the calibration data, especially for highly coherent dictionaries where alternative calibration-compatible dictionaries may assign different physical meanings to the same selected support. We develop resolution-aware physical-support inference that jointly accounts for uncertainty in the learned dictionary and in the representation of a deployment signal. Our cross-dictionary confidence correspondence retains calibration-compatible dictionaries and deployment-compatible sparse representations, then projects the surviving explanations onto physical-support space. For local coherent-atom classes with separation scale s, once the deployment data resolve the coherent-block explanation and its atom support, the minimax physical resolution from N calibration signals satisfies $δ_{\mathrm{opt}}(N,s)\asymp\min\{s,\frac{1}{\sqrt{N}s^2}\}$, with relative resolution governed by the orientation-information scale $Ns^6$. Deployment replication improves physical localization only when orientation changes cannot be absorbed by adjusting the active coefficients. For computation, we introduce active endpoint bracketing (AEB), an adaptive finite-bank procedure that evaluates only candidates that can still affect the physical report and otherwise safely coarsens or abstains. Finite-bank experiments, including a four-region synthetic application, show that a point-valued plug-in selector can be physically overprecise, whereas AEB avoids unsupported refinement with fewer candidate evaluations.
We study Gaussian-width complexity on statistical manifolds through a pair of functionals: the primal Fisher width $w_G(T) = w(G^{1/2}T)$, induced by the Fisher metric, and the inverse-Fisher width $w_{G^{-1}}(T) = w(G^{-1/2}T)$, induced by the inverse Fisher metric. The two widths play complementary statistical roles. On the learning side, the Fisher width measures the size of local parameter fluctuations in the geometry induced by the Fisher information. For Fisher-regular losses, we prove that the scale \(w_G(H_r)/\sqrt n\) is attained on sufficiently small Fisher balls. On the recovery side, the inverse-Fisher width captures the effect of anisotropic Gaussian measurements whose covariance is determined by the inverse Fisher information. For sparse recovery, the resulting geometry depends not only on sparsity but also on the position of the active coordinates in the Fisher spectrum. We obtain a two-sided estimate for the corresponding statistical dimension, together with support-sensitive recovery estimates and a natural ordering of supports with different curvature profiles. Finally, we establish a sharp relation between the primal and inverse-Fisher widths. On any common compact coordinate set $T$, they satisfy \[ w_G(T)w_{G^{-1}}(T)\geq w(T)^2. \] Thus, Fisher anisotropy may transfer complexity from one geometry to the other, but cannot reduce both widths relative to the Euclidean scale.
Binary Iterative Hard Thresholding (BIHT) is a simple, yet effective, greedy method for recovering a sparse vector from one-bit sign measurements. In its original form, BIHT performs a ``gradient-descent'' step, followed by hard thresholding. A convergence analysis of this algorithm was left open in the introductory work of [Jac+11] and has remained unresolved for over a decade, with subsequent sharp analyses studying a normalized variant instead, that additionally projects every iterate onto the unit sphere. This paper resolves that gap and characterizes when per-iteration normalization is algorithmically necessary. In the noiseless setting, we prove a universal, sample-optimal convergence theorem for the original BIHT algorithm. Specifically, with $\widetilde O(s/ε)$ measurements, a deterministic finite-time iterate has directional error at most $ε$, simultaneously for every $s$-sparse unit vector. This matches the optimal sample dependence achieved by normalized BIHT in prior work. Thus, in the noiseless regime, per-iterate normalization is unnecessary for optimal recovery. Under sign corruptions, we prove a sharp separation. If at most a $τ$ fraction of signs are flipped adversarially, then BIHT, without per-iterate normalization, still reaches the robust error floor at an early iterate with a matching $\widetilde O(s/ε)$ sample complexity rate as its normalized variant. This recovery, however, is not stable. We prove a scalar lower bound showing that any nontrivial corruption pattern, even one that involves only one flipped sign together with one clean sign, forces the iterates to oscillate indefinitely. Consequently, no general last-iterate convergence theorem can hold for BIHT under sign corruptions, while its normalized surrogate provably escapes this instance.
We consider the recovery of a pair of sparse vectors from a limited number of nonlinear observations of their superposition: $y_i=g(\inner{\ba_i}{\bPhi\bw^\ast+\bPsi\bz^\ast})+e_i$, $i=1,\dots,m$, with $m\ll n$, incoherent orthonormal bases $\bPhi,\bPsi$, a scalar link $g$, and noise $e_i$ that may be heavy-tailed or contaminated. We propose a regularization-based framework combining a Huberized data fidelity with generalized folded-concave penalties (SCAD, MCP), and a two-block proximal alternating algorithm with backtracking (NLD-PALM) whose whole iterate sequence provably converges to critical points under the Kurdyka--Łojasiewicz property, with local linear rates. On the statistical side we establish restricted strong convexity of the Huberized nonlinear loss through an exact sign-definite decomposition, and derive estimation error bounds of order $σ\sqrt{s\log(n)/m}$ that hold at \emph{every} localized stationary point, an oracle rate $σ\sqrt{s/m}$ free of $\log n$ and shrinkage bias under a beta-min condition, and a co-equal recovery theorem for \emph{unknown} monotone links via a linear surrogate and a clipped Plan--Vershynin decoupling. The estimator requires no knowledge of the sparsity levels, and its guarantees hold under symmetric noise with only finite variance. Experiments at $n=512$ under a frozen data-driven regularization rule show an earlier phase transition than convex $\ell_1$ demixing and greedy hard-thresholding baselines, a $35\times$ accuracy advantage over squared-loss estimation under $5\%$ gross outliers, and successful demixing of spike-plus-background signals observed through a saturating amplifier.