Related papers: Stein Variational Gradient Descent: A General Purp…
Stein discrepancies (SDs) monitor convergence and non-convergence in approximate inference when exact integration and sampling are intractable. However, the computation of a Stein discrepancy can be prohibitive if the Stein operator - often…
We propose a fast and scalable variational method for Bayesian inference in high-dimensional parameter space, which we call projected Stein variational Newton (pSVN) method. We exploit the intrinsic low-dimensional geometric structure of…
We study an interacting particle system in $\mathbf{R}^d$ motivated by Stein variational gradient descent [Q. Liu and D. Wang, NIPS 2016], a deterministic algorithm for sampling from a given probability density with unknown normalization.…
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…
In this paper we present a general framework for Stein's method for multivariate continuous distributions. The approach gives a collection of Stein characterisations, among which we highlight score-Stein operators and kernel Stein…
This monograph provides a rigorous overview of theoretical and methodological aspects of probabilistic inference and learning with Stein's method. Recipes are provided for constructing Stein discrepancies from Stein operators and Stein…
Estimation of a dynamical system's latent state subject to sensor noise and model inaccuracies remains a critical yet difficult problem in robotics. While Kalman filters provide the optimal solution in the least squared sense for linear and…
We derive finite-particle rates for the regularized Stein variational gradient descent (R-SVGD) algorithm introduced by He et al. (2024) that corrects the constant-order bias of the SVGD by applying a resolvent-type preconditioner to the…
Neural networks trained with standard objectives exhibit behaviors characteristic of probabilistic inference: soft clustering, prototype specialization, and Bayesian uncertainty tracking. These phenomena appear across architectures -- in…
Sliced Stein discrepancy (SSD) and its kernelized variants have demonstrated promising successes in goodness-of-fit tests and model learning in high dimensions. Despite their theoretical elegance, their empirical performance depends…
We consider chance-constrained problems with discrete random distribution. We aim for problems with a large number of scenarios. We propose a novel method based on the stochastic gradient descent method which performs updates of the…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) provides a simple and efficient way to solve a broad range of machine learning problems. Here, we focus on distribution regression (DR), involving two stages of sampling: Firstly, we regress from…
Gradient descent is one of the most widely used iterative algorithms in modern statistical learning. However, its precise algorithmic dynamics in high-dimensional settings remain only partially understood, which has limited its broader…
We propose a novel method for measuring the discrepancy between a set of samples and a desired posterior distribution for Bayesian inference. Classical methods for assessing sample quality like the effective sample size are not appropriate…
The paper considers the problem of network-based computation of global minima in smooth nonconvex optimization problems. It is known that distributed gradient-descent-type algorithms can achieve convergence to the set of global minima by…
Deep neural network ensembles are powerful tools for uncertainty quantification, which have recently been re-interpreted from a Bayesian perspective. However, current methods inadequately leverage second-order information of the loss…
Variational Bayesian inference is an important machine-learning tool that finds application from statistics to robotics. The goal is to find an approximate probability density function (PDF) from a chosen family that is in some sense…
We present a first-order method for solving constrained optimization problems. The method is derived from our previous work, a modified search direction method inspired by singular value decomposition. In this work, we simplify its…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is an important algorithm in machine learning. With constant learning rates, it is a stochastic process that, after an initial phase of convergence, generates samples from a stationary distribution. We show…
In this paper, we propose a novel kernel stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm for large-scale supervised learning with general losses. Compared to traditional kernel SGD, our algorithm improves efficiency and scalability through an…