  The lasso is a popular tool for sparse linear regression, especially for
problems in which the number of variables p exceeds the number of observations
n. But when p>n, the lasso criterion is not strictly convex, and hence it may
not have a unique minimum. An important question is: when is the lasso solution
well-defined (unique)? We review results from the literature, which show that
if the predictor variables are drawn from a continuous probability
distribution, then there is a unique lasso solution with probability one,
regardless of the sizes of n and p. We also show that this result extends
easily to $\ell_1$ penalized minimization problems over a wide range of loss
functions.
  A second important question is: how can we deal with the case of
non-uniqueness in lasso solutions? In light of the aforementioned result, this
case really only arises when some of the predictor variables are discrete, or
when some post-processing has been performed on continuous predictor
measurements. Though we certainly cannot claim to provide a complete answer to
such a broad question, we do present progress towards understanding some
aspects of non-uniqueness. First, we extend the LARS algorithm for computing
the lasso solution path to cover the non-unique case, so that this path
algorithm works for any predictor matrix. Next, we derive a simple method for
computing the component-wise uncertainty in lasso solutions of any given
problem instance, based on linear programming. Finally, we review results from
the literature on some of the unifying properties of lasso solutions, and also
point out particular forms of solutions that have distinctive properties.
