Related papers: Stochastic variational inference for large-scale d…
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…
This paper develops nonparametric estimation for discrete choice models based on the mixed multinomial logit (MMNL) model. It has been shown that MMNL models encompass all discrete choice models derived under the assumption of random…
Assortment optimization has received active explorations in the past few decades due to its practical importance. Despite the extensive literature dealing with optimization algorithms and latent score estimation, uncertainty quantification…
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)…
Logistic linear mixed model is widely used in experimental designs and genetic analysis with binary traits. Motivated by modern applications, we consider the case with many groups of random effects and each group corresponds to a variance…
In this paper, an approach to estimating a nonlinear deterministic model is presented. We introduce a stochastic model with extremely small variances so that the deterministic and stochastic models are essentially indistinguishable from…
In stochastic variational inference, the variational Bayes objective function is optimized using stochastic gradient approximation, where gradients computed on small random subsets of data are used to approximate the true gradient over the…
Multinomial Logit (MNL) is one of the most popular discrete choice models and has been widely used to model ranking data. However, there is a long-standing technical challenge of learning MNL from many real-world ranking data: exact…
We describe a variational approximation method for efficient inference in large-scale probabilistic models. Variational methods are deterministic procedures that provide approximations to marginal and conditional probabilities of interest.…
Variational Bayes (VB) methods have emerged as a fast and computationally-efficient alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for scalable Bayesian estimation of mixed multinomial logit (MMNL) models. It has been established…
Binary logit (BNL) and multinomial logit (MNL) models are the two most widely used discrete choice models for travel behavior modeling and prediction. However, in many scenarios, the collected data for those models are subject to…
We propose a variance reduction framework for variational inference using the Multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) method. Our framework is built on reparameterized gradient estimators and "recycles" parameters obtained from past update history in…
Non-linear hierarchical models are commonly used in many disciplines. However, inference in the presence of non-nested effects and on large datasets is challenging and computationally burdensome. This paper provides two contributions to…
Stochastic variational inference algorithms are derived for fitting various heteroskedastic time series models. We examine Gaussian, t, and skew-t response GARCH models and fit these using Gaussian variational approximating densities. We…
In this paper, we revisit parameter estimation for multinomial logit (MNL), nested logit (NL), and tree-nested logit (TNL) models through the framework of convex conic optimization. Traditional approaches typically solve the maximum…
Variational inference approximates the posterior distribution of a probabilistic model with a parameterized density by maximizing a lower bound for the model evidence. Modern solutions fit a flexible approximation with stochastic gradient…
Variational inference methods for latent variable statistical models have gained popularity because they are relatively fast, can handle large data sets, and have deterministic convergence guarantees. However, in practice it is unclear…
We introduce incremental variational inference and apply it to latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA). Incremental variational inference is inspired by incremental EM and provides an alternative to stochastic variational inference. Incremental…
In discrete choice modeling (DCM), model misspecifications may lead to limited predictability and biased parameter estimates. In this paper, we propose a new approach for estimating choice models in which we divide the systematic part of…
While multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) methods for the numerical approximation of partial differential equations with random coefficients enjoy great popularity, combinations with spatial adaptivity seem to be rare. We present an adaptive MLMC…