Related papers: Embarrassingly Parallel Variational Inference in N…
Many modern unsupervised or semi-supervised machine learning algorithms rely on Bayesian probabilistic models. These models are usually intractable and thus require approximate inference. Variational inference (VI) lets us approximate a…
Variational inference is computationally challenging in models that contain both conjugate and non-conjugate terms. Methods specifically designed for conjugate models, even though computationally efficient, find it difficult to deal with…
Undirected graphical models are applied in genomics, protein structure prediction, and neuroscience to identify sparse interactions that underlie discrete data. Although Bayesian methods for inference would be favorable in these contexts,…
Inference of latent feature models in the Bayesian nonparametric setting is generally difficult, especially in high dimensional settings, because it usually requires proposing features from some prior distribution. In special cases, where…
Variational inference (VI) plays an essential role in approximate Bayesian inference due to its computational efficiency and broad applicability. Crucial to the performance of VI is the selection of the associated divergence measure, as VI…
Mean-field variational methods are widely used for approximate posterior inference in many probabilistic models. In a typical application, mean-field methods approximately compute the posterior with a coordinate-ascent optimization…
Variational inference (VI) has become the method of choice for fitting many modern probabilistic models. However, practitioners are faced with a fragmented literature that offers a bewildering array of algorithmic options. First, the…
Training Gaussian process-based models typically involves an $ O(N^3)$ computational bottleneck due to inverting the covariance matrix. Popular methods for overcoming this matrix inversion problem cannot adequately model all types of latent…
The proliferation of computing devices has brought about an opportunity to deploy machine learning models on new problem domains using previously inaccessible data. Traditional algorithms for training such models often require data to be…
In this paper, we study a class of misspecified variational inequalities (VIs) where both the monotone operator and nonlinear convex constraints depend on an unknown parameter learned via a secondary VI. Existing data-driven VI methods…
Nonparametric mixture models based on the Dirichlet process are an elegant alternative to finite models when the number of underlying components is unknown, but inference in such models can be slow. Existing attempts to parallelize…
Deep learning has revolutionized the last decade, being at the forefront of extraordinary advances in a wide range of tasks including computer vision, natural language processing, and reinforcement learning, to name but a few. However, it…
Several recent works have explored stochastic gradient methods for variational inference that exploit the geometry of the variational-parameter space. However, the theoretical properties of these methods are not well-understood and these…
Variational inference (VI) is a popular approach in Bayesian inference, that looks for the best approximation of the posterior distribution within a parametric family, minimizing a loss that is typically the (reverse) Kullback-Leibler (KL)…
While MCMC methods have become a main work-horse for Bayesian inference, scaling them to large distributed datasets is still a challenge. Embarrassingly parallel MCMC strategies take a divide-and-conquer stance to achieve this by writing…
Stochastic variational inference (SVI), the state-of-the-art algorithm for scaling variational inference to large-datasets, is inherently serial. Moreover, it requires the parameters to fit in the memory of a single processor; this is…
Computer models play a crucial role in numerous scientific and engineering domains. To ensure the accuracy of simulations, it is essential to properly calibrate the input parameters of these models through statistical inference. While…
Communication costs, resulting from synchronization requirements during learning, can greatly slow down many parallel machine learning algorithms. In this paper, we present a parallel Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm in which…
Variational Inference (VI) offers a method for approximating intractable likelihoods. In neural VI, inference of approximate posteriors is commonly done using an encoder. Alternatively, encoderless VI offers a framework for learning…
Stochastic Natural Gradient Variational Inference (NGVI) is a widely used method for approximating posterior distribution in probabilistic models. Despite its empirical success and foundational role in variational inference, its theoretical…