Related papers: Using deterministic approximations to accelerate S…
Posterior sampling is a task of central importance in Bayesian inference. For many applications in Bayesian meta-analysis and Bayesian transfer learning, the prior distribution is unknown and needs to be estimated from samples. In practice,…
A key limitation of sampling algorithms for approximate inference is that it is difficult to quantify their approximation error. Widely used sampling schemes, such as sequential importance sampling with resampling and Metropolis-Hastings,…
This work introduces a new method designed for Bayesian deep learning called scalable Bayesian Monte Carlo (SBMC). The method is comprised of a model and an algorithm. The model interpolates between a point estimator and the posterior. The…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods are a class of Monte Carlo methods that are used to obtain random samples of a high dimensional random variable in a sequential fashion. Many problems encountered in applications often involve different…
In this paper we propose a new deterministic approximation method, called discretization approximation, for Bayesian computation. Discretization approximation is very simple to understand and to implement, It only requires calculating…
In the context of Bayesian inversion for scientific and engineering modeling, Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling strategies are the benchmark due to their flexibility and robustness in dealing with arbitrary posterior probability density…
Monte Carlo methods are essential tools for Bayesian inference. Gibbs sampling is a well-known Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm, extensively used in signal processing, machine learning, and statistics, employed to draw samples from…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods remain the mainstay of Bayesian estimation of structural equation models (SEM), though they often incur a high computational cost. We present a bespoke approximate Bayesian approach to SEM, drawing on…
Sample-based Bayesian inference provides a route to uncertainty quantification in the geosciences, and inverse problems in general, though is very computationally demanding in the naive form that requires simulating an accurate computer…
We propose a methodology to sample from time-integrated stochastic bridges, namely random variables defined as $\int_{t_1}^{t_2} f(Y(t))dt$ conditioned on $Y(t_1)\!=\!a$ and $Y(t_2)\!=\!b$, with $a,b\in R$. The Stochastic Collocation Monte…
The marginal likelihood plays an important role in many areas of Bayesian statistics such as parameter estimation, model comparison, and model averaging. In most applications, however, the marginal likelihood is not analytically tractable…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods comprise one of the most successful approaches to approximate Bayesian filtering. However, SMC without good proposal distributions struggle in high dimensions. We propose nested sequential Monte Carlo…
Stochastic Block Models (SBMs) are a fundamental tool for community detection in network analysis. But little theoretical work exists on the statistical performance of Bayesian SBMs, especially when the community count is unknown. This…
Variational inference approximates the posterior distribution of a probabilistic model with a parameterized density by maximizing a lower bound for the model evidence. Modern solutions fit a flexible approximation with stochastic gradient…
We present a new approach to sample from generic binary distributions, based on an exact Hamiltonian Monte Carlo algorithm applied to a piecewise continuous augmentation of the binary distribution of interest. An extension of this idea to…
We propose a novel approach to perform approximate Bayesian inference in complex models such as Bayesian neural networks. The approach is more scalable to large data than Markov Chain Monte Carlo, it embraces more expressive models than…
We propose the Bayesian bridge estimator for regularized regression and classification. Two key mixture representations for the Bayesian bridge model are developed: (1) a scale mixture of normals with respect to an alpha-stable random…
Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) is a popular inference method when likelihoods are hard to come by. Practical bottlenecks of ABC applications include selecting statistics that summarize the data without losing too much information or…
Solving ill-posed inverse problems by Bayesian inference has recently attracted considerable attention. Compared to deterministic approaches, the probabilistic representation of the solution by the posterior distribution can be exploited to…
This paper introduces a framework for speeding up Bayesian inference conducted in presence of large datasets. We design a Markov chain whose transition kernel uses an (unknown) fraction of (fixed size) of the available data that is randomly…