On matrix estimation under monotonicity constraints

Understand

We consider the problem of estimating an unknown $n_1 \times n_2$ matrix $\mathbf{\theta^*}$ from noisy observations under the constraint that $\mathbf{\theta}^*$ is nondecreasing in both rows and columns.

• We consider the least squares estimator (LSE) in this setting and study its risk properties.
• We show that the worst case risk of the LSE is $n^{-1/2}$, up to multiplicative logarithmic factors, where $n = n_1 n_2$ and that the LSE is minimax rate optimal (up to logarithmic factors).
• We further prove that for some special $\mathbf{\theta}^*$, the risk of the LSE could be much smaller than $n^{-1/2}$; in fact, it could even be parametric i.e., $n^{-1}$ up to logarithmic factors.