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Related papers: Variational Bayesian Monte Carlo

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Approximate Bayesian inference for models with computationally expensive, black-box likelihoods poses a significant challenge, especially when the posterior distribution is complex. Many inference methods struggle to explore the parameter…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-11 Francesco Silvestrin , Chengkun Li , Luigi Acerbi

Variational Bayesian Monte Carlo (VBMC) is a recently introduced framework that uses Gaussian process surrogates to perform approximate Bayesian inference in models with black-box, non-cheap likelihoods. In this work, we extend VBMC to deal…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-20 Luigi Acerbi

Practitioners of Bayesian statistics have long depended on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to obtain samples from intractable posterior distributions. Unfortunately, MCMC algorithms are typically serial, and do not scale to the large…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-06-11 Maxim Rabinovich , Elaine Angelino , Michael I. Jordan

PyVBMC is a Python implementation of the Variational Bayesian Monte Carlo (VBMC) algorithm for posterior and model inference for black-box computational models (Acerbi, 2018, 2020). VBMC is an approximate inference method designed for…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-06-29 Bobby Huggins , Chengkun Li , Marlon Tobaben , Mikko J. Aarnos , Luigi Acerbi

Variational Bayes (VB) is a popular tool for Bayesian inference in statistical modeling. Recently, some VB algorithms are proposed to handle intractable likelihoods with applications such as approximate Bayesian computation. In this paper,…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-09-28 Zhijian He , Zhenghang Xu , Xiaoqun Wang

Many recent advances in large scale probabilistic inference rely on variational methods. The success of variational approaches depends on (i) formulating a flexible parametric family of distributions, and (ii) optimizing the parameters to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-02-22 Christian A. Naesseth , Scott W. Linderman , Rajesh Ranganath , David M. Blei

Bayesian phylogenetic inference is often conducted via local or sequential search over topologies and branch lengths using algorithms such as random-walk Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) or Combinatorial Sequential Monte Carlo (CSMC).…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-06-21 Antonio Khalil Moretti , Liyi Zhang , Christian A. Naesseth , Hadiah Venner , David Blei , Itsik Pe'er

Traditionally, the field of computational Bayesian statistics has been divided into two main subfields: variational methods and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). In recent years, however, several methods have been proposed based on combining…

Computation · Statistics 2017-04-19 Cheng Zhang , Babak Shahbaba , Hongkai Zhao

Recent advances in stochastic gradient variational inference have made it possible to perform variational Bayesian inference with posterior approximations containing auxiliary random variables. This enables us to explore a new synthesis of…

Computation · Statistics 2015-05-20 Tim Salimans , Diederik P. Kingma , Max Welling

Most applications of Bayesian Inference for parameter estimation and model selection in astrophysics involve the use of Monte Carlo techniques such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and nested sampling. However, these techniques are time…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2022-01-26 Geetakrishnasai Gunapati , Anirudh Jain , P. K. Srijith , Shantanu Desai

We propose a novel sampling framework for inference in probabilistic models: an active learning approach that converges more quickly (in wall-clock time) than Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) benchmarks. The central challenge in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2014-11-04 Tom Gunter , Michael A. Osborne , Roman Garnett , Philipp Hennig , Stephen J. Roberts

Bayesian methods are particularly effective for addressing inverse problems due to their ability to manage uncertainties inherent in the inference process. However, employing these methods with costly forward models poses significant…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2025-10-30 G. Robalo Rei , C. P. Schmidt , J. Nitzler , M. Dinkel , W. A. Wall

This work introduces a new method designed for Bayesian deep learning called scalable Bayesian Monte Carlo (SBMC). The method is comprised of a model and an algorithm. The model interpolates between a point estimator and the posterior. The…

Variational inference is a powerful paradigm for approximate Bayesian inference with a number of appealing properties, including support for model learning and data subsampling. By contrast MCMC methods like Hamiltonian Monte Carlo do not…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-07-14 Martin Jankowiak , Du Phan

Bayesian calibration of black-box computer models offers an established framework to obtain a posterior distribution over model parameters. Traditional Bayesian calibration involves the emulation of the computer model and an additive model…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-10-30 Sébastien Marmin , Maurizio Filippone

Bayesian inference allows us to define a posterior distribution over the weights of a generic neural network (NN). Exact posteriors are usually intractable, in which case approximations can be employed. One such approximation - variational…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Andrew Millard , Joshua Murphy , Peter Green , Simon Maskell

This paper introduces a Bayesian framework that combines Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling, dimensionality reduction, and neural density estimation to efficiently handle inverse problems that (i) must be solved multiple times, and…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2026-02-24 Giacomo Bottacini , Matteo Torzoni , Andrea Manzoni

Variational inference lies at the core of many state-of-the-art algorithms. To improve the approximation of the posterior beyond parametric families, it was proposed to include MCMC steps into the variational lower bound. In this work we…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-09-28 Christopher Wolf , Maximilian Karl , Patrick van der Smagt

Bayesian inference provides a methodology for parameter estimation and uncertainty quantification in machine learning and deep learning methods. Variational inference and Markov Chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) sampling methods are used to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-08-27 Rohitash Chandra , Joshua Simmons

This paper focuses on variational inference with intractable likelihood functions that can be unbiasedly estimated. A flexible variational approximation based on Gaussian mixtures is developed, by adopting the mixture population Monte Carlo…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-12-02 Zhijian He , Shifeng Huo , Tianhui Yang
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