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Related papers: Approximate inference via variational sampling

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Most applications of Bayesian Inference for parameter estimation and model selection in astrophysics involve the use of Monte Carlo techniques such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and nested sampling. However, these techniques are time…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2022-01-26 Geetakrishnasai Gunapati , Anirudh Jain , P. K. Srijith , Shantanu Desai

The Bayesian estimation of GARCH-family models has been typically addressed through Monte Carlo sampling. Variational Inference is gaining popularity and attention as a robust approach for Bayesian inference in complex machine learning…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-10-06 Martin Magris , Alexandros Iosifidis

Bayesian inference allows us to define a posterior distribution over the weights of a generic neural network (NN). Exact posteriors are usually intractable, in which case approximations can be employed. One such approximation - variational…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Andrew Millard , Joshua Murphy , Peter Green , Simon Maskell

We study Bayesian inference methods for solving linear inverse problems, focusing on hierarchical formulations where the prior or the likelihood function depend on unspecified hyperparameters. In practice, these hyperparameters are often…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2018-08-01 Qingping Zhou , Wenqing Liu , Jinglai Li , Youssef M. Marzouk

Variational Bayesian Inference is a popular methodology for approximating posterior distributions over Bayesian neural network weights. Recent work developing this class of methods has explored ever richer parameterizations of the…

Mean-field variational inference is a method for approximate Bayesian posterior inference. It approximates a full posterior distribution with a factorized set of distributions by maximizing a lower bound on the marginal likelihood. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-07-03 John Paisley , David Blei , Michael Jordan

Popular deterministic approximations of posterior distributions from, e.g. the Laplace method, variational Bayes and expectation-propagation, generally rely on symmetric approximating families, often taken to be Gaussian. This choice…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-01-19 Francesco Pozza , Daniele Durante , Botond Szabo

Hierarchical models represent a challenging setting for inference algorithms. MCMC methods struggle to scale to large models with many local variables and observations, and variational inference (VI) may fail to provide accurate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-27 Tomas Geffner , Justin Domke

Maximizing the log-likelihood is a crucial aspect of learning latent variable models, and variational inference (VI) stands as the commonly adopted method. However, VI can encounter challenges in achieving a high log-likelihood when dealing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-05 Chengrui Li , Yule Wang , Weihan Li , Anqi Wu

It has historically been a challenge to perform Bayesian inference in a design-based survey context. The present paper develops a Bayesian model for sampling inference in the presence of inverse-probability weights. We use a hierarchical…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-06-24 Yajuan Si , Natesh S. Pillai , Andrew Gelman

In this paper we consider Bayesian estimation for the parameters of inverse Gaussian distribution. Our emphasis is on Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. We provide complete implementation of the Gibbs sampler algorithm. Assuming an…

Methodology · Statistics 2012-10-17 B. N. Pandey , Pulastya Bandyopadhyay

Several strategies have been developed recently to ensure valid inference after model selection; some of these are easy to compute, while others fare better in terms of inferential power. In this paper, we consider a selective inference…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-07-13 Snigdha Panigrahi , Jonathan Taylor

Non-Gaussian likelihoods are essential for modelling complex real-world observations but pose significant computational challenges in learning and inference. Even with Gaussian priors, non-Gaussian likelihoods often lead to analytically…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-10-29 Thang D. Bui

We study the convergence rates of empirical Bayes posterior distributions for nonparametric and high-dimensional inference. We show that as long as the hyperparameter set is discrete, the empirical Bayes posterior distribution induced by…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-09-10 Fengshuo Zhang , Chao Gao

Discrete choice models are commonly used by applied statisticians in numerous fields, such as marketing, economics, finance, and operations research. When agents in discrete choice models are assumed to have differing preferences, exact…

Methodology · Statistics 2010-06-04 Michael Braun , Jon McAuliffe

Recently, a very attractive logistic regression inference method for exponential family Gibbs spatial point processes was introduced. We combined it with the technique of quadratic tangential variational approximation and derived a new…

Other Statistics · Statistics 2014-11-04 Tuomas Rajala

Mean-field variational methods are widely used for approximate posterior inference in many probabilistic models. In a typical application, mean-field methods approximately compute the posterior with a coordinate-ascent optimization…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-03-14 Chong Wang , David M. Blei

A framework to boost the efficiency of Bayesian inference in probabilistic programs is introduced by embedding a sampler inside a variational posterior approximation. We call it the refined variational approximation. Its strength lies both…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-25 Victor Gallego , David Rios Insua

This article is concerned with the mathematical analysis of a family of adaptive importance sampling algorithms applied to diffusion processes. These methods, referred to as Adaptive Biasing Potential methods, are designed to efficiently…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-05-10 Michel Benaïm , Charles-Edouard Bréhier

The Poisson distribution arises naturally when dealing with data involving counts, and it has found many applications in inverse problems and imaging. In this work, we develop an approximate Bayesian inference technique based on expectation…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2019-09-04 Chen Zhang , Simon Arridge , Bangti Jin