Related papers: The EM algorithm and the Laplace Approximation

Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) methods, which are applicable when the likelihood is difficult or impossible to calculate, are an active topic of current research. Most current ABC algorithms directly approximate the posterior…

We present a new accelerated stochastic second-order method that is robust to both gradient and Hessian inexactness, which occurs typically in machine learning. We establish theoretical lower bounds and prove that our algorithm achieves…

The Stochastic Approximation EM (SAEM) algorithm, a variant stochastic approximation of EM, is a versatile tool for inference in incomplete data models. In this paper, we review the fundamental EM algorithm and then focus especially on the…

The EM algorithm is a widely used methodology for penalized likelihood estimation. Provable monotonicity and convergence are the hallmarks of the EM algorithm and these properties are well established for smooth likelihood and smooth…

Mixtures of linear mixed models (MLMMs) are useful for clustering grouped data and can be estimated by likelihood maximization through the EM algorithm. The conventional approach to determining a suitable number of components is to compare…

This paper focuses on the further development of the Lie bracket approximation approach for optimization and control via extremum seeking systems. Classical results in this area provide algorithms with exponential convergence rates for…

Empirical divergence maximization (EDM) refers to a recently proposed strategy for estimating f-divergences and likelihood ratio functions. This paper extends the idea to empirical vector quantization where one seeks to empirically derive…

In the paper we consider the problem of multivariate function approximation in polynomial basis. In order to solve this problem, we adjust the least squares method (LSM) by adding information about derivatives of the function. This…

A method for the introduction of second-order derivatives of the log likelihood into HMC algorithms is introduced, which does not require the Hessian to be evaluated at each leapfrog step but only at the start and end of trajectories.

In this paper, we propose a dynamical systems perspective of the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm. More precisely, we can analyze the EM algorithm as a nonlinear state-space dynamical system. The EM algorithm is widely adopted for…

Mixtures of Gaussian (or normal) distributions arise in a variety of application areas. Many heuristics have been proposed for the task of finding the component Gaussians given samples from the mixture, such as the EM algorithm, a…

Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) are fundamental statistical tools for modeling heterogeneous data. Due to the nonconcavity of the likelihood function, the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is widely used for parameter estimation of…

Expectation propagation (EP) is a powerful approximate inference algorithm. However, a critical barrier in applying EP is that the moment matching in message updates can be intractable. Handcrafting approximations is usually tricky, and…

Maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is a fundamental computational problem in statistics. The problem is to maximize the likelihood function with respect to given data on a statistical model. An algebraic approach to this problem is to…

Expectation maximization (EM) is the default algorithm for fitting probabilistic models with missing or latent variables, yet we lack a full understanding of its non-asymptotic convergence properties. Previous works show results along the…

We introduce the Binary Matrix Guessing Problem and provide two algorithms to solve this problem. The first algorithm we introduce is Elementwise Probing Algorithm (EPA) which is very fast under a score which utilizes Frobenius Distance.…

In a Bayesian inverse problem setting, the solution consists of a posterior measure obtained by combining prior belief, information about the forward operator, and noisy observational data. This measure is most often given in terms of a…

We explore past and recent developments in rare-event probability estimation with a particular focus on a novel Monte Carlo technique Empirical Likelihood Maximization (ELM). This is a versatile method that involves sampling from a sequence…

We consider the problem of estimating the parameters a Gaussian Mixture Model with K components of known weights, all with an identity covariance matrix. We make two contributions. First, at the population level, we present a sharper…

We use Stein's method to obtain explicit bounds on the rate of convergence for the Laplace approximation of two different sums of independent random variables; one being a random sum of mean zero random variables and the other being a…