This paper explores the preference-based top-$K$ rank aggregation problem. Suppose that a collection of items is repeatedly compared in pairs, and one wishes to recover a consistent ordering that emphasizes the top-$K$ ranked items, based on partially revealed preferences. We focus on the Bradley-Terry-Luce (BTL) model that postulates a set of latent preference scores underlying all items, where the odds of paired comparisons depend only on the relative scores of the items involved. We characterize the minimax limits on identifiability of top-$K$ ranked items, in the presence of random and non-adaptive sampling. Our results highlight a separation measure that quantifies the gap of preference scores between the $K^{\text{th}}$ and $(K+1)^{\text{th}}$ ranked items. The minimum sample complexity required for reliable top-$K$ ranking scales inversely with the separation measure irrespective of other preference distribution metrics. To approach this minimax limit, we propose a nearly linear-time ranking scheme, called \emph{Spectral MLE}, that returns the indices of the top-$K$ items in accordance to a careful score estimate. In a nutshell, Spectral MLE starts with an initial score estimate with minimal squared loss (obtained via a spectral method), and then successively refines each component with the assistance of coordinate-wise MLEs. Encouragingly, Spectral MLE allows perfect top-$K$ item identification under minimal sample complexity. The practical applicability of Spectral MLE is further corroborated by numerical experiments.

本文探讨了基于偏好的top-K排名聚合问题，并使用Bradley-Terry-Luce模型来表征隐含的偏好分数，提出了一种名为 Spectral MLE 的几乎线性时间排名方案，并揭示了可靠排名所需的最小采样复杂度和分离测度之间的关系。

基于谱最大似然估计的Top-K等级聚合方法，来自于成对比较