Related papers: A Variational Approximation for Bayesian Networks …
Each training step for a variational autoencoder (VAE) requires us to sample from the approximate posterior, so we usually choose simple (e.g. factorised) approximate posteriors in which sampling is an efficient computation that fully…
We propose a fast inference method for Bayesian nonlinear support vector machines that leverages stochastic variational inference and inducing points. Our experiments show that the proposed method is faster than competing Bayesian…
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…
Bayesian inference of Bayesian network structures is often performed by sampling directed acyclic graphs along an appropriately constructed Markov chain. We present two techniques to improve sampling. First, we give an efficient…
A variational inference-based framework for training a multi-output Gaussian process latent variable model, specifically tailored to the tails-up spatio-temporal stream network, is developed. Training, given a censored observational data…
Doubly intractable distributions arise in many settings, for example in Markov models for point processes and exponential random graph models for networks. Bayesian inference for these models is challenging because they involve intractable…
Gaussian distributions are widely used in Bayesian variational inference to approximate intractable posterior densities, but the ability to accommodate skewness can improve approximation accuracy significantly, when data or prior…
A method for sequential inference of the fixed parameters of a dynamic latent Gaussian models is proposed and evaluated that is based on the iterated Laplace approximation. The method provides a useful trade-off between computational…
For predictive modeling relying on Bayesian inversion, fully independent, or ``mean-field'', Gaussian distributions are often used as approximate probability density functions in variational inference since the number of variational…
Bayesian methods have proved powerful in many applications for the inference of model parameters from data. These methods are based on Bayes' theorem, which itself is deceptively simple. However, in practice the computations required are…
Bayesian neural networks often approximate the weight-posterior with a Gaussian distribution. However, practical posteriors are often, even locally, highly non-Gaussian, and empirical performance deteriorates. We propose a simple parametric…
Bayesian inference typically relies on specifying a parametric model that approximates the data-generating process. However, misspecified models can yield poor convergence rates and unreliable posterior calibration. Bayesian empirical…
Neural networks are popular state-of-the-art models for many different tasks.They are often trained via back-propagation to find a value of the weights that correctly predicts the observed data. Although back-propagation has shown good…
In this paper we examine the problem of inference in Bayesian Networks with discrete random variables that have very large or even unbounded domains. For example, in a domain where we are trying to identify a person, we may have variables…
This paper investigates the approximation of Gaussian random variables in Banach spaces, focusing on the high-probability bounds for the approximation of Gaussian random variables using finitely many observations. We derive non-asymptotic…
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…
This paper presents an approximate method for performing Bayesian inference in models with conditional independence over a decentralized network of learning agents. The method first employs variational inference on each individual learning…
Bayesian phylogenetic inference is currently done via Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) with simple proposal mechanisms. This hinders exploration efficiency and often requires long runs to deliver accurate posterior estimates. In this paper,…
Variational inference methods have been shown to lead to significant improvements in the computational efficiency of approximate Bayesian inference in mixed multinomial logit models when compared to standard Markov-chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)…
We propose a technique for increasing the efficiency of gradient-based inference and learning in Bayesian networks with multiple layers of continuous latent vari- ables. We show that, in many cases, it is possible to express such models in…