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Related papers: On Statistical Optimality of Variational Bayes

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Latent space models are popular for analyzing dynamic network data. We propose a variational approach to estimate the model parameters as well as the latent positions of the nodes in the network. The variational approach is much faster than…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-06-01 Yan Liu , Yuguo Chen

Explaining how overparametrized neural networks simultaneously achieve low risk and zero empirical risk on benchmark datasets is an open problem. PAC-Bayes bounds optimized using variational inference (VI) have been recently proposed as a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-06 Konstantinos Pitas

In this article, a general problem of sequential statistical inference for general discrete-time stochastic processes is considered. The problem is to minimize an average sample number given that Bayesian risk due to incorrect decision does…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2010-10-18 Andrey Novikov

We propose a method to approximate the distribution of robot configurations satisfying multiple objectives. Our approach uses variational inference, a popular method in Bayesian computation, which has several advantages over sampling-based…

Robotics · Computer Science 2019-11-25 Emmanuel Pignat , Teguh Lembono , Sylvain Calinon

A new empirical Bayes approach to variable selection in the context of generalized linear models is developed. The proposed algorithm scales to situations in which the number of putative explanatory variables is very large, possibly much…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-06-29 Haim Bar , James Booth , Martin T. Wells

Bayesian inference provides an attractive online-learning framework to analyze sequential data, and offers generalization guarantees which hold even with model mismatch and adversaries. Unfortunately, exact Bayesian inference is rarely…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-08-03 Badr-Eddine Chérief-Abdellatif , Pierre Alquier , Mohammad Emtiyaz Khan

Bayesian methods are useful for statistical inference. However, real-world problems can be challenging using Bayesian methods when the data analyst has only limited prior knowledge. In this paper we consider a class of problems, called…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-11-20 Yixuan Qiu , Lingsong Zhang , Chuanhai Liu

The method of statistical differentials, which approximates the mean and variance of transformations of random variables is used in many areas of mathematics. This paper will discuss the conditions under which such an approximation will be…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Rohitha Goonatilake

In a variety of scientific applications we wish to characterize a physical system using measurements or observations. This often requires us to solve an inverse problem, which usually has non-unique solutions so uncertainty must be…

Geophysics · Physics 2022-05-19 Xin Zhang , Muhammad Atif Nawaz , Xuebin Zhao , Andrew Curtis

We derive streamlined mean field variational Bayes algorithms for fitting linear mixed models with crossed random effects. In the most general situation, where the dimensions of the crossed groups are arbitrarily large, streamlining is…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-04-15 Marianne Menictas , Gioia Di Credico , Matt P. Wand

We propose and analyze a generalized splitting method to sample approximately from a distribution conditional on the occurrence of a rare event. This has important applications in a variety of contexts in operations research, engineering,…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-09-10 Zdravko I. Botev , Pierre L'Ecuyer

Mean-field variational inference is a method for approximate Bayesian posterior inference. It approximates a full posterior distribution with a factorized set of distributions by maximizing a lower bound on the marginal likelihood. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-07-03 John Paisley , David Blei , Michael Jordan

In this article a novel approach for training deep neural networks using Bayesian techniques is presented. The Bayesian methodology allows for an easy evaluation of model uncertainty and additionally is robust to overfitting. These are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-04-03 Konstantin Posch , Jürgen Pilz

Variational Bayes (VB) provides a computationally efficient alternative to Markov Chain Monte Carlo, especially for high-dimensional and large-scale inference. However, existing theory on VB primarily focuses on fixed-dimensional settings…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-08-05 Jiawei Yan , Peirong Xu , Tao Wang

We address the common problem of calculating intervals in the presence of systematic uncertainties. We aim to investigate several approaches, but here describe just a Bayesian technique for setting upper limits. The particular example we…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2007-05-23 Joel Heinrich , Craig Blocker , John Conway , Luc Demortier , Louis Lyons , Giovanni Punzi , Pekka K. Sinervo

Many modern unsupervised or semi-supervised machine learning algorithms rely on Bayesian probabilistic models. These models are usually intractable and thus require approximate inference. Variational inference (VI) lets us approximate a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-24 Cheng Zhang , Judith Butepage , Hedvig Kjellstrom , Stephan Mandt

We study Bayesian estimation of finite mixture models in a general setup where the number of components is unknown and allowed to grow with the sample size. An assumption on growing number of components is a natural one as the degree of…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-03-18 Ilsang Ohn , Lizhen Lin

It is well understood that Bayesian decision theory and average case analysis are essentially identical. However, if one is interested in performing uncertainty quantification for a numerical task, it can be argued that standard approaches…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-07-16 Chris. J. Oates , Jon Cockayne , Dennis Prangle , T. J. Sullivan , Mark Girolami

Due to their intuitive appeal, Bayesian methods of modeling and uncertainty quantification have become popular in modern machine and deep learning. When providing a prior distribution over the parameter space, it is straightforward to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-06-05 Ivan Melev , Goeran Kauermann

There is a rich literature proposing methods and establishing asymptotic properties of Bayesian variable selection methods for parametric models, with a particular focus on the normal linear regression model and an increasing emphasis on…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2011-08-16 Suprateek Kundu , David B. Dunson