LAUSR

Abstract The smooth integration of counting and absolute deviation (SICA) penalty has been demonstrated theoretically and practically to be effective in non-convex penalization for variable selection. However, solving the non-convex optimization problem associated with the SICA penalty when the number of variables exceeds the sample size remains to be enriched due to the singularity at the origin and the non-convexity of the SICA penalty function. In this paper, we develop an efficient and accurate alternating direction method of multipliers with continuation algorithm for solving the SICA-penalized least squares problem in high dimensions. We establish the convergence property of the proposed algorithm under some mild regularity conditions and study the corresponding Karush–Kuhn–Tucker optimality condition. A high-dimensional Bayesian information criterion is developed to select the optimal tuning parameters. We conduct extensive simulations studies to evaluate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed algorithm, while its practical usefulness is further illustrated with a high-dimensional microarray study.