Minimizers of sparsity regularized robust loss functions

Abstract

We study the structure of the local and global minimizers of the Huber loss and the sum of absolute deviations functions regularized with a sparsity penalty L0 norm term. We char-acterize local minimizers for both loss functions, and establish conditions that are necessary and sufficient for local minimizers to be strict. A necessary condition is established for global minimizers, as well as non-emptiness of the set of global minimizers. The sparsity of minimizers is also studied by giving bounds on a regularization parameter controlling sparsity. Results are illustrated in numerical examples.