Related papers: Stein Variational Gradient Descent as Gradient Flo…
Stein variational gradient decent (SVGD) has been shown to be a powerful approximate inference algorithm for complex distributions. However, the standard SVGD requires calculating the gradient of the target density and cannot be applied…
The curse of dimensionality is a longstanding challenge in Bayesian inference in high dimensions. In this work, we propose a projected Stein variational gradient descent (pSVGD) method to overcome this challenge by exploiting the…
Sampling from an unnormalized target distribution is an essential problem with many applications in probabilistic inference. Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) has been shown to be a powerful method that iteratively updates a set of…
We propose in this work RBM-SVGD, a stochastic version of Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) method for efficiently sampling from a given probability measure and thus useful for Bayesian inference. The method is to apply the Random…
Many particle-based Bayesian inference methods use a single global step size for all parts of the update. In Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD), however, each update combines two qualitatively different effects: attraction toward…
Among dissimilarities between probability distributions, the Kernel Stein Discrepancy (KSD) has received much interest recently. We investigate the properties of its Wasserstein gradient flow to approximate a target probability distribution…
We propose a Stein variational gradient descent method to concurrently sparsify, train, and provide uncertainty quantification of a complexly parameterized model such as a neural network. It employs a graph reconciliation and condensation…
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 an infinite-dimensional version of the Stein variational gradient descent (iSVGD) method for solving Bayesian inverse problems. The method can generate approximate samples from posteriors efficiently. Based on the…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) has been a go-to algorithm for nonconvex stochastic optimization problems arising in machine learning. Its theory however often requires a strong framework to guarantee convergence properties. We hereby…
We show how to use Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) to carry out inference in Gaussian process (GP) models with non-Gaussian likelihoods and large data volumes. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is extremely computationally intensive…
We propose a novel distributed inference algorithm for continuous graphical models, by extending Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) to leverage the Markov dependency structure of the distribution of interest. Our approach combines…
Bayesian inference problems require sampling or approximating high-dimensional probability distributions. The focus of this paper is on the recently introduced Stein variational gradient descent methodology, a class of algorithms that rely…
Approximate Bayesian inference estimates descriptors of an intractable target distribution - in essence, an optimization problem within a family of distributions. For example, Langevin dynamics (LD) extracts asymptotically exact samples…
Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) [Liu and Wang, 2016] performs approximate Bayesian inference by representing the posterior with a set of particles. However, SVGD suffers from variance collapse, i.e. poor predictions due to…
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…
Particle based optimization algorithms have recently been developed as sampling methods that iteratively update a set of particles to approximate a target distribution. In particular Stein variational gradient descent has gained attention…
We provide finite-particle convergence rates for the Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) algorithm in the Kernelized Stein Discrepancy ($\mathsf{KSD}$) and Wasserstein-2 metrics. Our key insight is that the time derivative of the…
Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) is a popular particle-based method for Bayesian inference. However, its convergence suffers from the variance collapse, which reduces the accuracy and diversity of the estimation. In this paper, we…
Particle-based variational inference methods (ParVIs) such as Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) update the particles based on the kernelized Wasserstein gradient flow for the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence. However, the design of…