Related papers: Accelerate RNN-based Training with Importance Samp…

Importance sampling (IS) is an important technique to reduce the estimation variance in Monte Carlo simulations. In many practical problems, however, the use of IS method may result in unbounded variance, and thus fail to provide reliable…

Evaluating the performance of autonomous vehicles (AV) and their complex subsystems to high precision under naturalistic circumstances remains a challenge, especially when failure or dangerous cases are rare. Rarity does not only require an…

Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) have received an increased interest in the last years. In BNNs, a complete posterior distribution of the unknown weight and bias parameters of the network is produced during the training stage. This…

Neural quantum states (NQS) have emerged as powerful tools for simulating many-body quantum systems, but their practical use is often hindered by limitations of current sampling techniques. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods suffer…

Long iterative training processes for Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are commonly required to achieve state-of-the-art performance in many computer vision tasks. Importance sampling approaches might play a key role in budgeted training…

Machine learning optimization often depends on stochastic gradient descent, where the precision of gradient estimation is vital for model performance. Gradients are calculated from mini-batches formed by uniformly selecting data samples…

We propose a novel adaptive importance sampling algorithm which incorporates Stein variational gradient decent algorithm (SVGD) with importance sampling (IS). Our algorithm leverages the nonparametric transforms in SVGD to iteratively…

Sequential importance sampling algorithms have been defined to estimate likelihoods in models of ancestral population processes. However, these algorithms are based on features of the models with constant population size, and become…

This paper considers Importance Sampling (IS) for the estimation of tail risks of a loss defined in terms of a sophisticated object such as a machine learning feature map or a mixed integer linear optimisation formulation. Assuming only…

Off-policy learning exhibits greater instability when compared to on-policy learning in reinforcement learning (RL). The difference in probability distribution between the target policy ($\pi$) and the behavior policy (b) is a major cause…

Probabilistic models based on Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs) imply the evaluation of normalized Boltzmann factors, which in turn require from the evaluation of the partition function Z. The exact evaluation of Z, though, becomes a…

Adaptive importance sampling (AIS) algorithms are a rising methodology in signal processing, statistics, and machine learning. An effective adaptation of the proposals is key for the success of AIS. Recent works have shown that gradient…

Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) have been shown to be valuable for constructing Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) for network data. They allow determining if a flow is malicious or not already before it is over, making it possible to take…

In rare-event simulation, an importance sampling (IS) estimator is regarded as efficient if its relative error, namely the ratio between its standard deviation and mean, is sufficiently controlled. It is widely known that when a rare-event…

Large language models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable progress, demonstrating unprecedented capabilities across various natural language processing tasks. However, the high costs associated with such exceptional performance limit the…

Importance sampling (IS) and numerical integration methods are usually employed for approximating moments of complicated target distributions. In its basic procedure, the IS methodology randomly draws samples from a proposal distribution…

Many high-energy-physics (HEP) simulations for the LHC rely on Monte Carlo using importance sampling by means of the VEGAS algorithm. However, complex high-precision calculations have become a challenge for the standard toolbox, as this…

We introduce data structures for solving robust regression through stochastic gradient descent (SGD) by sampling gradients with probability proportional to their norm, i.e., importance sampling. Although SGD is widely used for large scale…

Importance sampling (IS) is a popular technique in off-policy evaluation, which re-weights the return of trajectories in the replay buffer to boost sample efficiency. However, training with IS can be unstable and previous attempts to…

Reinforcement learning, including reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR), has emerged as a powerful approach for LLM post-training. Central to these approaches is the design of the importance sampling (IS) ratio used in…