Algorithm 1042: Sparse Precision Matrix Estimation with SQUIC

Abstract

We present SQUIC , a fast and scalable package for sparse precision matrix estimation. The algorithm employs a second-order method to solve the \(\ell_{1}\) -regularized maximum likelihood problem, utilizing highly optimized linear algebra subroutines. In comparative tests using synthetic datasets, we demonstrate that SQUIC not only scales to datasets of up to a million random variables but also consistently delivers run times that are significantly faster than other well-established sparse precision matrix estimation packages. Furthermore, we showcase the application of the introduced package in classifying microarray gene expressions. We demonstrate that by utilizing a matrix form of the tuning parameter (also known as the regularization parameter), SQUIC can effectively incorporate prior information into the estimation procedure, resulting in improved application results with minimal computational overhead.