Hierarchical approximations for data reduction and learning at multiple scales

This paper describes a hierarchical learning strategy for generating sparse representations of multivariate datasets. The hierarchy arises from approximation spaces considered at successively finer scales. A detailed analysis of stability, convergence and behavior of error functionals associated with the approximations are presented, along with a well chosen set of applications. Results show the performance of the approach as a data reduction mechanism for both synthetic (univariate and multivariate) and a real dataset (geo-spatial). The sparse representation generated is shown to efficiently reconstruct data and minimize error in prediction. The approach is also shown to generalize well to unseen samples, extending its prospective application to statistical learning problems.