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Related papers: Approximate Inference with Amortised MCMC

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We develop a computationally efficient framework for quasi-Bayesian inference based on linear moment conditions. The approach employs a delayed acceptance Markov chain Monte Carlo (DA-MCMC) algorithm that uses a surrogate target kernel and…

Computation · Statistics 2026-02-18 Masahiro Tanaka

In Bayesian statistics, the choice of the prior can have an important influence on the posterior and the parameter estimation, especially when few data samples are available. To limit the added subjectivity from a priori information, one…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-12-05 Nils Baillie , Antoine Van Biesbroeck , Clément Gauchy

Lifted probabilistic inference algorithms have been successfully applied to a large number of symmetric graphical models. Unfortunately, the majority of real-world graphical models is asymmetric. This is even the case for relational…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2014-12-02 Guy Van den Broeck , Mathias Niepert

Bayesian inference often faces a trade-off between computational speed and sampling accuracy. We propose an adaptive workflow that integrates rapid amortized inference with gold-standard MCMC techniques to achieve a favorable combination of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-19 Chengkun Li , Aki Vehtari , Paul-Christian Bürkner , Stefan T. Radev , Luigi Acerbi , Marvin Schmitt

We propose a novel sampling framework for inference in probabilistic models: an active learning approach that converges more quickly (in wall-clock time) than Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) benchmarks. The central challenge in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2014-11-04 Tom Gunter , Michael A. Osborne , Roman Garnett , Philipp Hennig , Stephen J. Roberts

Bayesian inference for models with intractable likelihoods, such as Markov random fields, poses a fundamental computational challenge due to the tradeoff between inferential accuracy and computational cost. Various MCMC methods have been…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-01 Laura Bazahica , Alejandra Avalos-Pacheco , Matthew Moores , Lassi Roininen

This paper proposes a novel approach to generate samples from target distributions that are difficult to sample from using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. Traditional MCMC algorithms often face slow convergence due to the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2023-08-11 Sandro Dias Pinto Vitenti , Eduardo J. Barroso

We describe and analyze a variance reduction approach for Monte Carlo (MC) sampling that accelerates the estimation of statistics of computationally expensive simulation models using an ensemble of models with lower cost. These lower cost…

Computation · Statistics 2021-05-04 Alex A. Gorodetsky , Gianluca Geraci , Mike Eldred , John D. Jakeman

We introduce a novel framework for efficient sampling from complex, unnormalised target distributions by exploiting multiscale dynamics. Traditional score-based sampling methods either rely on learned approximations of the score function or…

Computation · Statistics 2025-11-04 Paula Cordero-Encinar , Andrew B. Duncan , Sebastian Reich , O. Deniz Akyildiz

We focus on generative autoencoders, such as variational or adversarial autoencoders, which jointly learn a generative model alongside an inference model. Generative autoencoders are those which are trained to softly enforce a prior on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-01-13 Antonia Creswell , Kai Arulkumaran , Anil Anthony Bharath

We develop methods for efficient amortized approximate Bayesian inference over posterior distributions of probabilistic clustering models, such as Dirichlet process mixture models. The approach is based on mapping distributed,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-11-27 Ari Pakman , Liam Paninski

We consider distributed estimation of the inverse covariance matrix, also called the concentration or precision matrix, in Gaussian graphical models. Traditional centralized estimation often requires global inference of the covariance…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-06-15 Zhaoshi Meng , Dennis Wei , Ami Wiesel , Alfred O. Hero

In classification tasks, softmax functions are ubiquitously used as output activations to produce predictive probabilities. Such outputs only capture aleatoric uncertainty. To capture epistemic uncertainty, approximate Gaussian inference…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Bálint Mucsányi , Nathaël Da Costa , Philipp Hennig

Approximate Bayesian computation methods can be used to evaluate posterior distributions without having to calculate likelihoods. In this paper we discuss and apply an approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) method based on sequential Monte…

Computation · Statistics 2009-01-15 Tina Toni , David Welch , Natalja Strelkowa , Andreas Ipsen , Michael P. H. Stumpf

Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) is a useful class of methods for Bayesian inference when the likelihood function is computationally intractable. In practice, the basic ABC algorithm may be inefficient in the presence of discrepancy…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2015-05-14 Stefano Cabras , Maria Eugenia Castellanos Nueda , Erlis Ruli

Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is commonly used for parameter estimation and model comparison for intractable simulator-based models whose likelihood function cannot be evaluated. In this paper we instead investigate the feasibility…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-09-13 Marko Järvenpää , Jukka Corander

In parameter estimation problems one computes a posterior distribution over uncertain parameters defined jointly by a prior distribution, a model, and noisy data. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is often used for the numerical solution of…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2017-11-15 Matthias Morzfeld , Marcus S. Day , Ray W. Grout , George Shu Heng Pau , Stefan A. Finsterle , John B. Bell

We propose new Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms to sample probability distributions on submanifolds, which generalize previous methods by allowing the use of set-valued maps in the proposal step of the MCMC algorithms. The motivation for…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-10-07 Tony Lelièvre , Gabriel Stoltz , Wei Zhang

We develop a framework for approximating collapsed Gibbs sampling in generative latent variable cluster models. Collapsed Gibbs is a popular MCMC method, which integrates out variables in the posterior to improve mixing. Unfortunately for…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-07-23 Christopher Aicher , Emily B. Fox

Amortized inference allows latent-variable models trained via variational learning to scale to large datasets. The quality of approximate inference is determined by two factors: a) the capacity of the variational distribution to match the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-05-29 Chris Cremer , Xuechen Li , David Duvenaud