Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-optimisation-for-data-science-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2023/1/a/solution

Put and . The proximal operator for the L1 norm separates into independent scalar minimization problems:
The subgradient optimality condition is . By the subgradient of the absolute value, a positive solution must satisfy , and a negative solution must satisfy . At zero, the subgradient optimality condition holds exactly when . The squared term makes the objective function a strictly convex function, so these cases give its unique minimiser.
Thus the proximal operator is the soft-thresholding operator
Consequently the requested proximal gradient mapping, rather than just the proximal operator, is
The corresponding proximal gradient method update is . Small coordinates are set exactly to zero. When , the soft-thresholding operator is the identity and the proximal gradient mapping reduces to .

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