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Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a non-parametric inference algorithm that evolves a set of particles to fit a given distribution of interest. We analyze the non-asymptotic properties of SVGD, showing that there exists a set of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-10-30 Qiang Liu , Dilin Wang

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a kernel-based particle method for sampling from a target distribution, e.g., in generative modeling and Bayesian inference. SVGD does not require estimating the gradient of the log-density,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-04-10 Viktor Stein , Wuchen Li

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…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-02-09 Junxiong Jia , Peijun Li , Deyu Meng

This paper introduces Distributed Stein Variational Gradient Descent (DSVGD), a non-parametric generalized Bayesian inference framework for federated learning. DSVGD maintains a number of non-random and interacting particles at a central…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-31 Rahif Kassab , Osvaldo Simeone

Bayesian computation plays an important role in modern machine learning and statistics to reason about uncertainty. A key computational challenge in Bayesian inference is to develop efficient techniques to approximate, or draw samples from…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-09-01 Liang Yan , Tao Zhou

Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD), a popular sampling algorithm, is often described as the kernelized gradient flow for the Kullback-Leibler divergence in the geometry of optimal transport. We introduce a new perspective on SVGD…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-06-05 Sinho Chewi , Thibaut Le Gouic , Chen Lu , Tyler Maunu , Philippe Rigollet

Mirror Descent (MD) is a scalable first-order method widely used in large-scale optimization, with applications in image processing, policy optimization, and neural network training. This paper generalizes MD to optimization on Riemannian…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-19 Jiaxin Jiang , Lei Shi , Jiyuan Tan

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Arash Sarshar

We study optimization of finite sums of geodesically smooth functions on Riemannian manifolds. Although variance reduction techniques for optimizing finite-sums have witnessed tremendous attention in the recent years, existing work is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-04-11 Hongyi Zhang , Sashank J. Reddi , Suvrit Sra

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a general-purpose optimization-based sampling algorithm that has recently exploded in popularity, but is limited by two issues: it is known to produce biased samples, and it can be slow to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-04-20 Alex Leviyev , Joshua Chen , Yifei Wang , Omar Ghattas , Aaron Zimmerman

Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) is a highly efficient method to sample from an unnormalized probability distribution. However, the SVGD update relies on gradients of the log-density, which may not always be available. Existing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-13 Cornelius V. Braun , Robert T. Lange , Marc Toussaint

A central challenge in Bayesian inference is efficiently approximating posterior distributions. Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) is a popular variational inference method which transports a set of particles to approximate a target…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-12-05 Moritz Melcher , Simon Weissmann , Ashia C. Wilson , Jakob Zech

Gradient-based approximate inference methods, such as Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD), provide simple and general-purpose inference engines for differentiable continuous distributions. However, existing forms of SVGD cannot be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-03 Jun Han , Fan Ding , Xianglong Liu , Lorenzo Torresani , Jian Peng , Qiang Liu

This paper proposes a novel general framework of Riemannian conjugate gradient methods, that is, conjugate gradient methods on Riemannian manifolds. The conjugate gradient methods are important first-order optimization algorithms both in…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-11-21 Hiroyuki Sato

We propose a general purpose variational inference algorithm that forms a natural counterpart of gradient descent for optimization. Our method iteratively transports a set of particles to match the target distribution, by applying a form of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-09-10 Qiang Liu , Dilin Wang

In this project, we propose a Variational Inference algorithm to approximate posterior distributions. Building on prior methods, we develop the Gradient-Steered Stein Variational Gradient Descent (G-SVGD) approach. This method introduces a…

Computation · Statistics 2025-02-03 Jose L. Varona-Santana , Marcos A. Capistrán

The conjugate gradient method is a crucial first-order optimization method that generally converges faster than the steepest descent method, and its computational cost is much lower than that of second-order methods. However, while various…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-13 Jun Chen , Haishan Ye , Mengmeng Wang , Tianxin Huang , Guang Dai , Ivor W. Tsang , Yong Liu

Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) is a popular sampling algorithm used in various machine learning tasks. It is well known that SVGD arises from a discretization of the kernelized gradient flow of the Kullback-Leibler divergence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Lukang Sun , Peter Richtárik

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a deterministic sampling algorithm that iteratively transports a set of particles to approximate given distributions, based on an efficient gradient-based update that guarantees to optimally…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-11-15 Qiang Liu

Conjugate gradient (CG) methods are widely acknowledged as efficient for minimizing continuously differentiable functions in Euclidean spaces. In recent years, various CG methods have been extended to Riemannian manifold optimization, but…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-26 Chunming Tang , Shaohui Liang , Huangyue Chen