Motivated by studies of neural networks, particularly the neural tangent kernel theory, we investigate the large-dimensional behavior of kernel ridge regression, where the sample size satisfies $n $ is proportion to $ d^{\gamma}$ for some $\gamma > 0$. Given a reproducing kernel Hilbert space $H$ associated with an inner product kernel defined on the unit sphere $S^{d}$, we assume that the true function $f_{\rho}^{*}$ belongs to the interpolation space $[H]^{s}$ for some $s>0$ (source condition). We first establish the exact order (both upper and lower bounds) of the generalization error of KRR for the optimally chosen regularization parameter $\lambda$. Furthermore, we show that KRR is minimax optimal when $01$, KRR fails to achieve minimax optimality, exhibiting the saturation effect. Our results illustrate that the convergence rate with respect to dimension $d$ varying along $\gamma$ exhibits a periodic plateau behavior, and the convergence rate with respect to sample size $n$ exhibits a multiple descent behavior. Interestingly, our work unifies several recent studies on kernel regression in the large-dimensional setting, which correspond to $s=0$ and $s=1$, respectively. [abs][pdf][bib] © JMLR 2025. (edit, beta) Mastodon

The saturation effects, which originally refer to the fact that kernel ridge regression (KRR) fails to achieve the information-theoretical lower bound when the regression function is over-smooth, have been observed for almost 20 years and were rigorously proved recently for kernel ridge regression and some other spectral algorithms over a fixed dimensional domain. The main focus of this paper is to explore the saturation effects for a large class of spectral algorithms (including the KRR, gradient descent, etc.) in large dimensional settings where $n \asymp d^{\gamma}$. More precisely, we first propose an improved minimax lower bound for the kernel regression problem in large dimensional settings and show that the gradient flow with early stopping strategy will result in an estimator achieving this lower bound (up to a logarithmic factor). Similar to the results in KRR, we can further determine the exact convergence rates (both upper and lower bounds) of a large class of (optimal tuned) spectral algorithms with different qualification $\tau$'s. In particular, we find that these exact rate curves (varying along $\gamma$) exhibit the periodic plateau behavior and the polynomial approximation barrier. Consequently, we can fully depict the saturation effects of the spectral algorithms and reveal a new phenomenon in large dimensional settings (i.e., the saturation effect occurs in large dimensional setting as long as the source condition $s>\tau$ while it occurs in fixed dimensional setting as long as $s>2\tau$).

In the misspecified spectral algorithms problem, researchers usually assume the underground true function $f_{\rho}^{*} \in [\mathcal{H}]^{s}$, a less-smooth interpolation space of a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) $\mathcal{H}$ for some $s\in (0,1)$. The existing minimax optimal results require $\|f_{\rho}^{*}\|_{L^{\infty}}<\infty$ which implicitly requires $s > \alpha_{0}$ where $\alpha_{0}\in (0,1)$ is the embedding index, a constant depending on $\mathcal{H}$. Whether the spectral algorithms are optimal for all $s\in (0,1)$ is an outstanding problem lasting for years. In this paper, we show that spectral algorithms are minimax optimal for any $\alpha_{0}-\frac{1}{\beta} < s < 1$, where $\beta$ is the eigenvalue decay rate of $\mathcal{H}$. We also give several classes of RKHSs whose embedding index satisfies $ \alpha_0 = \frac{1}{\beta} $. Thus, the spectral algorithms are minimax optimal for all $s\in (0,1)$ on these RKHSs.

In the misspecified kernel ridge regression problem, researchers usually assume the underground true function $f_{\rho}^{\star} \in [\mathcal{H}]^{s}$, a less-smooth interpolation space of a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) $\mathcal{H}$ for some $s\in (0,1)$. The existing minimax optimal results require $\left\Vert f_{\rho}^{\star} \right \Vert_{L^{\infty}} < \infty$ which implicitly requires $s > \alpha_{0}$ where $\alpha_{0} \in (0,1) $ is the embedding index, a constant depending on $\mathcal{H}$. Whether the KRR is optimal for all $s\in (0,1)$ is an outstanding problem lasting for years. In this paper, we show that KRR is minimax optimal for any $s\in (0,1)$ when the $\mathcal{H}$ is a Sobolev RKHS.

The widely observed 'benign overfitting phenomenon' in the neural network literature raises the challenge to the `bias-variance trade-off' doctrine in the statistical learning theory. Since the generalization ability of the 'lazy trained' over-parametrized neural network can be well approximated by that of the neural tangent kernel regression, the curve of the excess risk (namely, the learning curve) of kernel ridge regression attracts increasing attention recently. However, most recent arguments on the learning curve are heuristic and are based on the 'Gaussian design' assumption. In this paper, under mild and more realistic assumptions, we rigorously provide a full characterization of the learning curve in the asymptotic sense under a power-law decay condition of the eigenvalues of the kernel and also the target function. The learning curve elaborates the effect and the interplay of the choice of the regularization parameter, the source condition and the noise. In particular, our results suggest that the 'benign overfitting phenomenon' exists in over-parametrized neural networks only when the noise level is small.