Zhigang Yao

Zheng Zhai, Hengchao Chen, Zhigang Yao

Ridge estimation is an important manifold learning technique. The goal of this paper is to examine the effects of nonlinear transformations on the ridge sets. The main result proves the inclusion relationship between ridges: $\cR(f\circ p)\subseteq \cR(p)$, provided that the transformation $f$ is strictly increasing and concave on the range of the function $p$. Additionally, given an underlying true manifold $\cM$, we show that the Hausdorff distance between $\cR(f\circ p)$ and its projection onto $\cM$ is smaller than the Hausdorff distance between $\cR(p)$ and the corresponding projection. This motivates us to apply an increasing and concave transformation before the ridge estimation. In specific, we show that the power transformations $f^{q}(y)=y^q/q,-\infty<q\leq 1$ are increasing and concave on $\RR_+$, and thus we can use such power transformations when $p$ is strictly positive. Numerical experiments demonstrate the advantages of the proposed methods.

Jiaqi Wu, Yiqing Sun, Zhigang Yao

We introduce a differentially private manifold denoising framework that allows users to exploit sensitive reference datasets to correct noisy, non-private query points without compromising privacy. The method follows an iterative procedure that (i) privately estimates local means and tangent geometry using the reference data under calibrated sensitivity, (ii) projects query points along the privately estimated subspace toward the local mean via corrective steps at each iteration, and (iii) performs rigorous privacy accounting across iterations and queries using $(\varepsilon,δ)$-differential privacy (DP). Conceptually, this framework brings differential privacy to manifold methods, retaining sufficient geometric signal for downstream tasks such as embedding, clustering, and visualization, while providing formal DP guarantees for the reference data. Practically, the procedure is modular and scalable, separating DP-protected local geometry (means and tangents) from budgeted query-point updates, with a simple scheduler allocating privacy budget across iterations and queries. Under standard assumptions on manifold regularity, sampling density, and measurement noise, we establish high-probability utility guarantees showing that corrected queries converge toward the manifold at a non-asymptotic rate governed by sample size, noise level, bandwidth, and the privacy budget. Simulations and case studies demonstrate accurate signal recovery under moderate privacy budgets, illustrating clear utility-privacy trade-offs and providing a deployable DP component for manifold-based workflows in regulated environments without reengineering privacy systems.

Tianhao Ni, Bingjie Li, Zhigang Yao

To address the dual challenges of the curse of dimensionality and the difficulty in separating intra-cluster and inter-cluster structures in high-dimensional manifold embedding, we proposes an Adaptive Multi-Scale Manifold Embedding (AMSME) algorithm. By introducing ordinal distance to replace traditional Euclidean distances, we theoretically demonstrate that ordinal distance overcomes the constraints of the curse of dimensionality in high-dimensional spaces, effectively distinguishing heterogeneous samples. We design an adaptive neighborhood adjustment method to construct similarity graphs that simultaneously balance intra-cluster compactness and inter-cluster separability. Furthermore, we develop a two-stage embedding framework: the first stage achieves preliminary cluster separation while preserving connectivity between structurally similar clusters via the similarity graph, and the second stage enhances inter-cluster separation through a label-driven distance reweighting. Experimental results demonstrate that AMSME significantly preserves intra-cluster topological structures and improves inter-cluster separation on real-world datasets. Additionally, leveraging its multi-resolution analysis capability, AMSME discovers novel neuronal subtypes in the mouse lumbar dorsal root ganglion scRNA-seq dataset, with marker gene analysis revealing their distinct biological roles.

Zhigang Yao, Bingjie Li, Wee Chin Tan

Modern sample points in many applications no longer comprise real vectors in a real vector space but sample points of much more complex structures, which may be represented as points in a space with a certain underlying geometric structure, namely a manifold. Manifold learning is an emerging field for learning the underlying structure. The study of manifold learning can be split into two main branches: dimension reduction and manifold fitting. With the aim of combining statistics and geometry, we address the problem of manifold fitting in the ambient space. Inspired by the relation between the eigenvalues of the Laplace-Beltrami operator and the geometry of a manifold, we aim to find a small set of points that preserve the geometry of the underlying manifold. From this relationship, we extend the idea of subsampling to sample points in high-dimensional space and employ the Moving Least Squares (MLS) approach to approximate the underlying manifold. We analyze the two core steps in our proposed method theoretically and also provide the bounds for the MLS approach. Our simulation results and theoretical analysis demonstrate the superiority of our method in estimating the underlying manifold.

Zhigang Yao, Yuqing Xia

There has been an emerging trend in non-Euclidean statistical analysis of aiming to recover a low dimensional structure, namely a manifold, underlying the high dimensional data. Recovering the manifold requires the noise to be of certain concentration. Existing methods address this problem by constructing an approximated manifold based on the tangent space estimation at each sample point. Although theoretical convergence for these methods is guaranteed, either the samples are noiseless or the noise is bounded. However, if the noise is unbounded, which is a common scenario, the tangent space estimation at the noisy samples will be blurred. Fitting a manifold from the blurred tangent space might increase the inaccuracy. In this paper, we introduce a new manifold-fitting method, by which the output manifold is constructed by directly estimating the tangent spaces at the projected points on the underlying manifold, rather than at the sample points, to decrease the error caused by the noise. Assuming the noise is unbounded, our new method provides theoretical convergence in high probability, in terms of the upper bound of the distance between the estimated and underlying manifold. The smoothness of the estimated manifold is also evaluated by bounding the supremum of twice difference above. Numerical simulations are provided to validate our theoretical findings and demonstrate the advantages of our method over other relevant manifold fitting methods. Finally, our method is applied to real data examples.

Zhigang Yao, Zhenyue Zhang

We consider the classification problem and focus on nonlinear methods for classification on manifolds. For multivariate datasets lying on an embedded nonlinear Riemannian manifold within the higher-dimensional ambient space, we aim to acquire a classification boundary for the classes with labels, using the intrinsic metric on the manifolds. Motivated by finding an optimal boundary between the two classes, we invent a novel approach -- the principal boundary. From the perspective of classification, the principal boundary is defined as an optimal curve that moves in between the principal flows traced out from two classes of data, and at any point on the boundary, it maximizes the margin between the two classes. We estimate the boundary in quality with its direction, supervised by the two principal flows. We show that the principal boundary yields the usual decision boundary found by the support vector machine in the sense that locally, the two boundaries coincide. Some optimality and convergence properties of the random principal boundary and its population counterpart are also shown. We illustrate how to find, use and interpret the principal boundary with an application in real data.