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In variational inference (VI), the practitioner approximates a high-dimensional distribution $\pi$ with a simple surrogate one, often a (product) Gaussian distribution. However, in many cases of practical interest, Gaussian distributions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-01 Luca Ghafourpour , Sinho Chewi , Alessio Figalli , Aram-Alexandre Pooladian

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are based on the construction of a Markov chain with transition probabilities leaving invariant a probability distribution of interest. In this work, we look at these transition probabilities as…

Probability · Mathematics 2024-10-01 Rocco Caprio , Adam M. Johansen

Black-box variational inference (BBVI) now sees widespread use in machine learning and statistics as a fast yet flexible alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for approximate Bayesian inference. However, stochastic optimization…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-09-22 Manushi Welandawe , Michael Riis Andersen , Aki Vehtari , Jonathan H. Huggins

We present a unified theory of the variational Monte Carlo (VMC) and determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC) methods using a novel density matrix formulation of VMC. We introduce an efficient algorithm for VMC to compute correlation…

Strongly Correlated Electrons · Physics 2018-10-02 Mohammad-Sadegh Vaezi , Abolhassan Vaezi

Statistical inference methods are fundamentally important in machine learning. Most state-of-the-art inference algorithms are variants of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) or variational inference (VI). However, both methods struggle with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-17 Yichuan Zhang , José Miguel Hernández-Lobato

The work in this paper is four-fold. Firstly, we introduce an alternative approach to solve fractional ordinary differential equations as an expected value of a random time process. Using the latter, we present an interesting numerical…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2022-12-28 Tamer Oraby , Harrinson Arrubla , Erwin Suazo

Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) are fundamental tools for modeling physical phenomena, yet most PDEs of practical interest cannot be solved analytically and require numerical approximations. The feasibility of such numerical methods,…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-12-03 Juan Esteban Suarez Cardona , Holger Boche , Gitta Kutyniok

Algorithms based on discretizing Langevin diffusion are popular tools for sampling from high-dimensional distributions. We develop novel connections between such Monte Carlo algorithms, the theory of Wasserstein gradient flow, and the…

Computation · Statistics 2019-05-13 Espen Bernton

In this paper we consider the filtering of a class of partially observed piecewise deterministic Markov processes (PDMPs). In particular, we assume that an ordinary differential equation (ODE) drives the deterministic element and can only…

Computation · Statistics 2023-09-07 Ajay Jasra , Kengo Kamatani , Mohamed Maama

Gaussian processes (GPs) are Bayesian nonparametric models for function approximation with principled predictive uncertainty estimates. Deep Gaussian processes (DGPs) are multilayer generalizations of GPs that can represent complex marginal…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-09-20 Qiuxian Meng , Yongyou Zhang

There has been substantial interest in developing Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms based on piecewise-deterministic Markov processes. However existing algorithms can only be used if the target distribution of interest is differentiable…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-11-12 Augustin Chevallier , Sam Power , Andi Q. Wang , Paul Fearnhead

We introduce a variational algorithm to estimate the likelihood of a rare event within a nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulation through the evaluation of an optimal control force. Optimization of a control force within a chosen basis…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-01-14 Avishek Das , David T. Limmer

Sampling and Variational Inference (VI) are two large families of methods for approximate inference that have complementary strengths. Sampling methods excel at approximating arbitrary probability distributions, but can be inefficient. VI…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-07 Richard D. Lange , Ari Benjamin , Ralf M. Haefner , Xaq Pitkow

Owing to the recent advances in "Big Data" modeling and prediction tasks, variational Bayesian estimation has gained popularity due to their ability to provide exact solutions to approximate posteriors. One key technique for approximate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-03-01 Hamza Anwar , Quanyan Zhu

Future wireless networks are envisioned to provide ubiquitous sensing services, which also gives rise to a substantial demand for high-dimensional non-convex parameter estimation, i.e., the associated likelihood function is non-convex and…

Signal Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-10-10 Zhixiang Hu , An Liu , Minjian Zhao

Piecewise deterministic Markov processes (PDMPs) are a class of stochastic processes with applications in several fields of applied mathematics spanning from mathematical modeling of physical phenomena to computational methods. A PDMP is…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-09-30 Andrea Bertazzi , Joris Bierkens , Paul Dobson

Probabilistic modeling provides the capability to represent and manipulate uncertainty in data, models, predictions and decisions. We are concerned with the problem of learning probabilistic models of dynamical systems from measured data.…

Computation · Statistics 2018-03-14 Thomas B. Schön , Andreas Svensson , Lawrence Murray , Fredrik Lindsten

Particle splitting methods are considered for the estimation of rare events. The probability of interest is that a Markov process first enters a set $B$ before another set $A$, and it is assumed that this probability satisfies a large…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-11-14 Thomas Dean , Paul Dupuis

Traditionally, the field of computational Bayesian statistics has been divided into two main subfields: variational methods and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). In recent years, however, several methods have been proposed based on combining…

Computation · Statistics 2017-04-19 Cheng Zhang , Babak Shahbaba , Hongkai Zhao

Deep Gaussian processes (DGPs) provide a robust paradigm for Bayesian deep learning. In DGPs, a set of sparse integration locations called inducing points are selected to approximate the posterior distribution of the model. This is done to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-25 Jian Xu , Delu Zeng , John Paisley