Exact Limits of Random Projections for Preserving Geometry: Distance Recovery, Nearest-Neighbor Rankings, and Covariance Shape in Gaussian Models
The Johnson-Lindenstrauss (JL) lemma guarantees that a random projection of $n$ points to $m=O(\varepsilon^{-2}\log n)$ dimensions preserves pairwise squared distances within relative error $\varepsilon$ with high probability, and this dimension order is asymptotically optimal. In high dimensions, however, distances concentrate around a baseline while key geometric information lies in much smaller fluctuations. We show that the JL bound can therefore be uninformative about retained geometry: an independent Gaussian replacement map can satisfy it even though the replacement cloud is independent of the original data. We then ask how well any decoder can recover a feature $f(D)$ of a squared...
| Authors | Piyush Sao |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 2 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 2 September 2026 |
Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 17 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.