Related papers: A Convergence Analysis for A Class of Practical Va…
The goal of this paper is to accelerate the training of machine learning models, a critical challenge since the training of large-scale deep neural models can be computationally expensive. Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its variants…
We investigate the stability of a Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) method applied to the problem of sampling from a target distribution on $\mathbb{R}^d$ for large $d$. It is well known that using a single importance sampling step one produces…
Stochastic Gradient Descent with a constant learning rate (constant SGD) simulates a Markov chain with a stationary distribution. With this perspective, we derive several new results. (1) We show that constant SGD can be used as an…
We study nonconvex finite-sum problems and analyze stochastic variance reduced gradient (SVRG) methods for them. SVRG and related methods have recently surged into prominence for convex optimization given their edge over stochastic gradient…
Variational Monte Carlo (VMC) is an approach for computing ground-state wavefunctions that has recently become more powerful due to the introduction of neural network-based wavefunction parametrizations. However, efficiently training neural…
In this paper, we introduce efficient ensemble Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling methods for Bayesian computations in the univariate stochastic volatility model. We compare the performance of our ensemble MCMC methods with an…
While stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is one of the major workhorses in machine learning, the learning properties of many practically used variants are poorly understood. In this paper, we consider least squares learning in a…
The configuration model is a standard tool for uniformly generating random graphs with a specified degree sequence, and is often used as a null model to evaluate how much of an observed network's structure can be explained by its degree…
In this paper, we propose a novel reinforcement- learning algorithm consisting in a stochastic variance-reduced version of policy gradient for solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Stochastic variance-reduced gradient (SVRG) methods…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is almost ubiquitously used for training non-convex optimization tasks. Recently, a hypothesis proposed by Keskar et al. [2017] that large batch methods tend to converge to sharp minimizers has received…
We study optimization algorithms based on variance reduction for stochastic gradient descent (SGD). Remarkable recent progress has been made in this direction through development of algorithms like SAG, SVRG, SAGA. These algorithms have…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods asymptotically sample from complex probability distributions. The pseudo-marginal MCMC framework only requires an unbiased estimator of the unnormalized probability distribution function to construct…
We consider the efficient use of an approximation within Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), with subsequent importance sampling (IS) correction of the Markov chain inexact output, leading to asymptotically exact inference. We detail…
Bayesian models have become very popular over the last years in several fields such as signal processing, statistics, and machine learning. Bayesian inference requires the approximation of complicated integrals involving posterior…
There has been considerable interest in making Bayesian inference more scalable. In big data settings, most literature focuses on reducing the computing time per iteration, with less focused on reducing the number of iterations needed in…
We develop a framework that allows the use of the multi-level Monte Carlo (MLMC) methodology (Giles2015) to calculate expectations with respect to the invariant measure of an ergodic SDE. In that context, we study the (over-damped) Langevin…
Sampling from a log-concave distribution function is one core problem that has wide applications in Bayesian statistics and machine learning. While most gradient free methods have slow convergence rate, the Langevin Monte Carlo (LMC) that…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is the engine of modern Bayesian statistics, being used to approximate the posterior and derived quantities of interest. Despite this, the issue of how the output from a Markov chain is post-processed and…
Stochastic gradient Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (SGHMC) is an efficient method for sampling from continuous distributions. It is a faster alternative to HMC: instead of using the whole dataset at each iteration, SGHMC uses only a subsample.…
We present an efficient algorithm for the inference of stochastic block models in large networks. The algorithm can be used as an optimized Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method, with a fast mixing time and a much reduced susceptibility to…