Related papers: Rao-Blackwellized Stochastic Gradients for Discret…
We provide a general methodology for unbiased estimation for intractable stochastic models. We consider situations where the target distribution can be written as an appropriate limit of distributions, and where conventional approaches…
While stochastic geometry provides a powerful framework for the analysis of cellular networks, standard Monte Carlo simulations often suffer from slow convergence due to the stochasticity of the infinite far-field. This work introduces the…
Gradient-based optimization is the foundation of deep learning and reinforcement learning. Even when the mechanism being optimized is unknown or not differentiable, optimization using high-variance or biased gradient estimates is still…
Stochastic sampling methods are arguably the most direct and least intrusive means of incorporating parametric uncertainty into numerical simulations of partial differential equations with random inputs. However, to achieve an overall error…
Stochastic gradient descent is a classic algorithm that has gained great popularity especially in the last decades as the most common approach for training models in machine learning. While the algorithm has been well-studied when…
Estimating the Kullback--Leibler (KL) divergence between language models has many applications, e.g., reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), interpretability, and knowledge distillation. However, computing the exact KL…
This paper tackles the challenge of parameter calibration in stochastic models, particularly in scenarios where the likelihood function is unavailable in an analytical form. We introduce a gradient-based simulated parameter estimation…
We present a new algorithm for approximate inference in probabilistic programs, based on a stochastic gradient for variational programs. This method is efficient without restrictions on the probabilistic program; it is particularly…
For finite-dimensional problems, stochastic approximation methods have long been used to solve stochastic optimization problems. Their application to infinite-dimensional problems is less understood, particularly for nonconvex objectives.…
We compute a variance lower bound for unbiased estimators in specified statistical models. The construction of the bound is related to the original Cram\'er-Rao bound, although it does not require the differentiability of the model.…
A stochastic gradient method for finite-sum minimization subject to deterministic linear constraints is proposed and analyzed. The procedure presented adapts the projected gradient method on convex set to the use of both a stochastic…
Black Box Variational Inference is a promising framework in a succession of recent efforts to make Variational Inference more ``black box". However, in basic version it either fails to converge due to instability or requires some…
This paper explores a Bayesian self-organization method for state-space models, enabling simultaneous state and parameter estimation without repeated likelihood calculations. While efficient for low-dimensional models, high-dimensional…
In this paper, we consider static parameter estimation for a class of continuous-time state-space models. Our goal is to obtain an unbiased estimate of the gradient of the log-likelihood (score function), which is an estimate that is…
This paper proposes a distributed stochastic projection-free algorithm for large-scale constrained finite-sum optimization whose constraint set is complicated such that the projection onto the constraint set can be expensive. The global…
Variational inference in Bayesian deep learning often involves computing the gradient of an expectation that lacks a closed-form solution. In these cases, pathwise and score-function gradient estimators are the most common approaches. The…
We develop a new primitive for stochastic optimization: a low-bias, low-cost estimator of the minimizer $x_\star$ of any Lipschitz strongly-convex function. In particular, we use a multilevel Monte-Carlo approach due to Blanchet and Glynn…
Variable selection is essential in high-dimensional data analysis. Although various variable selection methods have been developed, most rely on the linear model assumption. This article proposes a nonparametric variable selection method…
This paper presents an algorithmic framework for solving unconstrained stochastic optimization problems using only stochastic function evaluations. We employ central finite-difference based gradient estimation methods to approximate the…
Gradient estimation -- approximating the gradient of an expectation with respect to the parameters of a distribution -- is central to the solution of many machine learning problems. However, when the distribution is discrete, most common…