Robust approximate linear regression without correspondence

Estimating regression coefficients using unordered multisets of covariates and responses has been introduced as the regression without correspondence problem. Previous theoretical analysis of the problem has been done in a setting where the responses are a permutation of the regressed covariates. This paper expands the setting by analyzing the problem where they may be missing correspondences and outliers in addition to a permutation action. We term this problem robust regression without correspondence and provide several algorithms for exact and approximate recovery in a noiseless and noisy one-dimensional setting as well as an approximation algorithm for multiple dimensions. The theoretical guarantees of the algorithms are verified in simulation data. We also demonstrate a neuroscience application by obtaining robust point set matchings of the neurons of the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans.