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Related papers: Alpha-Beta Divergence For Variational Inference

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Variational Inference (VI) provides a scalable framework for Bayesian inference by optimizing the Evidence Lower Bound (ELBO), but convergence analysis remains challenging due to the objective's non-convexity and non-smoothness in Euclidean…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-20 Sushil Bohara , Amedeo Roberto Esposito

Black box variational inference (BBVI) with reparameterization gradients triggered the exploration of divergence measures other than the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence, such as alpha divergences. In this paper, we view BBVI with…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-01-09 Robert Bamler , Cheng Zhang , Manfred Opper , Stephan Mandt

The forward Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence is a ubiquitous objective for fitting a parameterized distribution to samples due to its tractability and equivalence to maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). Its inherent asymmetry, however, may…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Omri Ben-Dov , Luiz F. O. Chamon

We introduce a new transformation called \emph{relative differential-escort}, which extends the usual differential-escort transformation by relating the change of variable to a reference probability density. As an application of it, we…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2025-07-24 Razvan Gabriel Iagar , David Puertas-Centeno , Elio V. Toranzo

In this article we study the field of Hilbertian metrics and positive definit (pd) kernels on probability measures, they have a real interest in kernel methods. Firstly we will make a study based on the Alpha-Beta-divergence to have a…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-09-18 Mactar Ndaw , Macoumba Ndour , Papa Ngom

Variational inference uses optimization, rather than integration, to approximate the marginal likelihood, and thereby the posterior, in a Bayesian model. Thanks to advances in computational scalability made in the last decade, variational…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-01-04 Jens Sjölund

We show how the notion of message passing can be used to streamline the algebra and computer coding for fast approximate inference in large Bayesian semiparametric regression models. In particular, this approach is amenable to handling…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-04-07 M. P. Wand

We provide a rigorous analysis of training by variational inference (VI) of Bayesian neural networks in the two-layer and infinite-width case. We consider a regression problem with a regularized evidence lower bound (ELBO) which is…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-07-12 Arnaud Descours , Tom Huix , Arnaud Guillin , Manon Michel , Éric Moulines , Boris Nectoux

We empirically evaluate a stochastic annealing strategy for Bayesian posterior optimization with variational inference. Variational inference is a deterministic approach to approximate posterior inference in Bayesian models in which a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-05-26 San Gultekin , Aonan Zhang , John Paisley

In recent years, the field of machine learning has made phenomenal progress in the pursuit of simulating real-world data generation processes. One notable example of such success is the variational autoencoder (VAE). In this work, with a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-12-30 Hwan Goh , Sheroze Sheriffdeen , Jonathan Wittmer , Tan Bui-Thanh

Generative models frequently suffer miscalibration, wherein statistics of the sampling distribution, such as the fraction of generations in a given class, deviate from desired values. We frame calibration as a constrained optimization…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-29 Henry D. Smith , Nathaniel L. Diamant , Brian L. Trippe

Nonlinear kernel regression models are often used in statistics and machine learning because they are more accurate than linear models. Variable selection for kernel regression models is a challenge partly because, unlike the linear…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-06-13 Lorin Crawford , Kris C. Wood , Xiang Zhou , Sayan Mukherjee

Bayesian inference for high-dimensional inverse problems is computationally costly and requires selecting a suitable prior distribution. Amortized variational inference addresses these challenges via a neural network that approximates the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-01-19 Ali Siahkoohi , Gabrio Rizzuti , Rafael Orozco , Felix J. Herrmann

Distributed inference/estimation in Bayesian framework in the context of sensor networks has recently received much attention due to its broad applicability. The variational Bayesian (VB) algorithm is a technique for approximating…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-11-30 Junhao Hua , Chunguang Li

Recently, Stochastic Variational Inference (SVI) has been increasingly attractive thanks to its ability to find good posterior approximations of probabilistic models. It optimizes the variational objective with stochastic optimization,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-16 Minta Liu , Suliang Bu

This paper considers statistical inference for the explained variance $\beta^{\intercal}\Sigma \beta$ under the high-dimensional linear model $Y=X\beta+\epsilon$ in the semi-supervised setting, where $\beta$ is the regression vector and…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-12-01 T. Tony Cai , Zijian Guo

We propose a new Bayesian Neural Net formulation that affords variational inference for which the evidence lower bound is analytically tractable subject to a tight approximation. We achieve this tractability by (i) decomposing ReLU…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-06-13 Manuel Haussmann , Fred A. Hamprecht , Melih Kandemir

Divergences are quantities that measure discrepancy between two probability distributions and play an important role in various fields such as statistics and machine learning. Divergences are non-negative and are equal to zero if and only…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-10-22 Tomohiro Nishiyama

Variance reduction is a family of powerful mechanisms for stochastic optimization that appears to be helpful in many machine learning tasks. It is based on estimating the exact gradient with some recursive sequences. Previously, many papers…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-07 Aleksandr Shestakov , Valery Parfenov , Aleksandr Beznosikov

Several recent works have explored stochastic gradient methods for variational inference that exploit the geometry of the variational-parameter space. However, the theoretical properties of these methods are not well-understood and these…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-08-15 Mohammad Emtiyaz Khan , Reza Babanezhad , Wu Lin , Mark Schmidt , Masashi Sugiyama