English
Related papers

Related papers: Approximating the Permanent with Fractional Belief…

200 papers

We present a novel inference algorithm for arbitrary, binary, undirected graphs. Unlike loopy belief propagation, which iterates fixed point equations, we directly descend on the Bethe free energy. The algorithm consists of two phases,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-01-14 Max Welling , Yee Whye Teh

It is known that fixed points of loopy belief propagation (BP) correspond to stationary points of the Bethe variational problem, where we minimize the Bethe free energy subject to normalization and marginalization constraints.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-03-19 Tomas Werner

Data association, the problem of reasoning over correspondence between targets and measurements, is a fundamental problem in tracking. This paper presents a graphical model formulation of data association and applies an approximate…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2014-12-16 Jason L. Williams , Roslyn A. Lau

Inference problems in graphical models can be represented as a constrained optimization of a free energy function. It is known that when the Bethe free energy is used, the fixedpoints of the belief propagation (BP) algorithm correspond to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-06-18 Tamir Hazan , Amnon Shashua

The belief propagation (BP) algorithm is widely applied to perform approximate inference on arbitrary graphical models, in part due to its excellent empirical properties and performance. However, little is known theoretically about when…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-06-26 Alexander T. Ihler

Belief Propagation is a well-studied message-passing algorithm that runs over graphical models and can be used for approximate inference and approximation of local marginals. The resulting approximations are equivalent to the Bethe-Peierls…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-05-05 Roy Alkabetz , Itai Arad

Belief Propagation (BP) is a powerful algorithm for distributed inference in probabilistic graphical models, however it quickly becomes infeasible for practical compute and memory budgets. Many efficient, non-parametric forms of BP have…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Tom Yates , Yuzhou Cheng , Ignacio Alzugaray , Danyal Akarca , Pedro A. M. Mediano , Andrew J. Davison

We present Causal Posterior Estimation (CPE), a novel method for Bayesian inference in simulator models, i.e., models where the evaluation of the likelihood function is intractable or too computationally expensive, but where one can…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-28 Simon Dirmeier , Antonietta Mira

We often encounter probability distributions given as unnormalized products of non-negative functions. The factorization structures are represented by hypergraphs called factor graphs. Such distributions appear in various fields, including…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2011-03-24 Yusuke Watanabe

We address the problem of uncertainty propagation in the discrete Fourier transform by modeling the fast Fourier transform as a factor graph. Building on this representation, we propose an efficient framework for approximate Bayesian…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-09 Luca Schmid , Charlotte Muth , Laurent Schmalen

Belief Propagation (BP) is a simple probabilistic inference algorithm, consisting of passing messages between nodes of a graph representing a probability distribution. Its analogy with a neural network suggests that it could have…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-03-20 Vincent Bouttier , Renaud Jardri , Sophie Deneve

Belief Propagation has been widely used for marginal inference, however it is slow on problems with large-domain variables and high-order factors. Previous work provides useful approximations to facilitate inference on such models, but…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-11-15 Sameer Singh , Sebastian Riedel , Andrew McCallum

We prove that the permanent of nonnegative matrices can be deterministically approximated within a factor of $\sqrt{2}^n$ in polynomial time, improving upon the previous deterministic approximations. We show this by proving that the Bethe…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-12-11 Nima Anari , Alireza Rezaei

Expectation Propagation (EP) is a widely used iterative message-passing algorithm that decomposes a global inference problem into multiple local ones. It approximates marginal distributions as ``beliefs'' using intermediate functions called…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-07 Zilu Zhao , Jichao Chen , Dirk Slock

We present a detailed study on application of factor graphs and the belief propagation (BP) algorithm to the power system state estimation (SE) problem. We start from the BP solution for the linear DC model, for which we provide a detailed…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2018-11-21 Mirsad Cosovic

Max-product Belief Propagation (BP) is a popular message-passing algorithm for computing a Maximum-A-Posteriori (MAP) assignment over a distribution represented by a Graphical Model (GM). It has been shown that BP can solve a number of…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-09-24 Sungsoo Ahn , Sejun Park , Michael Chertkov , Jinwoo Shin

Flexoelectricity refers to a phenomenon which involves a coupling of the mechanical strain gradient and electric polarization. In this study, a meshless Fragile Points Method (FPM), is presented for analyzing flexoelectric effects in…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2020-11-13 Yue Guan , Leiting Dong , Satya N. Atluri

The sum-product or belief propagation (BP) algorithm is a widely-used message-passing algorithm for computing marginal distributions in graphical models with discrete variables. At the core of the BP message updates, when applied to a…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2012-05-28 Nima Noorshams , Martin J. Wainwright

Free energy perturbation (FEP) is considered the gold-standard simulation method for estimating small molecule binding affinity, a quantity of vital importance to drug discovery. The accuracy of FEP critically depends on an accurate model…

Approximating the permanent of a complex-valued matrix is a fundamental problem with applications in Boson sampling and probabilistic inference. In this paper, we extend factor-graph-based methods for approximating the permanent of…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Junda Zhou , Pascal O. Vontobel