Related papers: Extreme Stochastic Variational Inference: Distribu…
Stochastic Interpolants (SI) is a powerful framework for generative modeling, capable of flexibly transforming between two probability distributions. However, its use in jointly optimized latent variable models remains unexplored as it…
We develop nested variational inference (NVI), a family of methods that learn proposals for nested importance samplers by minimizing an forward or reverse KL divergence at each level of nesting. NVI is applicable to many commonly-used…
We introduce TrustVI, a fast second-order algorithm for black-box variational inference based on trust-region optimization and the reparameterization trick. At each iteration, TrustVI proposes and assesses a step based on minibatches of…
Support vector machine (SVM) is a particularly powerful and flexible supervised learning model that analyzes data for both classification and regression, whose usual algorithm complexity scales polynomially with the dimension of data space…
We consider the problem of inference in a linear regression model in which the relative ordering of the input features and output labels is not known. Such datasets naturally arise from experiments in which the samples are shuffled or…
We present a hierarchical, control theory inspired method for variational inference (VI) for neural stochastic differential equations (SDEs). While VI for neural SDEs is a promising avenue for uncertainty-aware reasoning in time-series, it…
Virtual screening (VS) is an essential technique for understanding biomolecular interactions, particularly, drug design and discovery. The best-performing VS models depend vitally on three-dimensional (3D) structures, which are not…
Approximate inference in high-dimensional, discrete probabilistic models is a central problem in computational statistics and machine learning. This paper describes discrete particle variational inference (DPVI), a new approach that…
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…
In this paper, we propose AsyncQVI, an asynchronous-parallel Q-value iteration for discounted Markov decision processes whose transition and reward can only be sampled through a generative model. Given such a problem with $|\mathcal{S}|$…
The differential stochastic variational inequality with parametric convex optimization (DSVI-O) is an ordinary differential equation whose right-hand side involves a stochastic variational inequality and solutions of several dynamic and…
Mean-field variational inference (MFVI) has been widely applied in large scale Bayesian inference. However MFVI, which assumes a product distribution on the latent variables, often leads to objective functions with many local optima, making…
Automatic differentiation variational inference (ADVI) offers fast and easy-to-use posterior approximation in multiple modern probabilistic programming languages. However, its stochastic optimizer lacks clear convergence criteria and…
We introduce a new variational inference (VI) framework, called energetic variational inference (EVI). It minimizes the VI objective function based on a prescribed energy-dissipation law. Using the EVI framework, we can derive many existing…
Probabilistic state estimation is essential for robots navigating uncertain environments. Accurately and efficiently managing uncertainty in estimated states is key to robust robotic operation. However, nonlinearities in robotic platforms…
This paper introduces the $f$-divergence variational inference ($f$-VI) that generalizes variational inference to all $f$-divergences. Initiated from minimizing a crafty surrogate $f$-divergence that shares the statistical consistency with…
Value iteration (VI) is a foundational dynamic programming method, important for learning and planning in optimal control and reinforcement learning. VI proceeds in batches, where the update to the value of each state must be completed…
Recent contributions of semantic information theory reveal the set-element relationship between semantic and syntactic information, represented as synonymous relationships. In this paper, we propose a synonymous variational inference (SVI)…
Variational inference is becoming more and more popular for approximating intractable posterior distributions in Bayesian statistics and machine learning. Meanwhile, a few recent works have provided theoretical justification and new…
Stochastic gradient methods for machine learning and optimization problems are usually analyzed assuming data points are sampled \emph{with} replacement. In practice, however, sampling \emph{without} replacement is very common, easier to…