Related papers: Mixed Variational Inference
We propose an adaptive importance sampling scheme for Gaussian approximations of intractable posteriors. Optimization-based approximations like variational inference can be too inaccurate while existing Monte Carlo methods can be too slow.…
To achieve scalable and accurate inference for latent Gaussian processes, we propose a variational approximation based on a family of Gaussian distributions whose covariance matrices have sparse inverse Cholesky (SIC) factors. We combine…
Variational approximation methods have proven to be useful for scaling Bayesian computations to large data sets and highly parametrized models. Applying variational methods involves solving an optimization problem, and recent research in…
Variational inference has become one of the most widely used methods in latent variable modeling. In its basic form, variational inference employs a fully factorized variational distribution and minimizes its KL divergence to the posterior.…
Variational inference offers scalable and flexible tools to tackle intractable Bayesian inference of modern statistical models like Bayesian neural networks and Gaussian processes. For largely over-parameterized models, however, the…
We propose a family of variational approximations to Bayesian posterior distributions, called $\alpha$-VB, with provable statistical guarantees. The standard variational approximation is a special case of $\alpha$-VB with $\alpha=1$. When…
Synthetic likelihood is an attractive approach to likelihood-free inference when an approximately Gaussian summary statistic for the data, informative for inference about the parameters, is available. The synthetic likelihood method derives…
Variational autoencoders employ an amortized inference model to approximate the posterior of latent variables. However, such amortized variational inference faces two challenges: (1) the limited posterior expressiveness of fully-factorized…
The Laplace approximation (LA) has been proposed as a method for approximating the marginal likelihood of statistical models with latent variables. However, the approximate maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs) based on the LA are often…
Variational Bayesian Inference is a popular methodology for approximating posterior distributions over Bayesian neural network weights. Recent work developing this class of methods has explored ever richer parameterizations of the…
We consider the problem of approximate Bayesian parameter inference in non-linear state-space models with intractable likelihoods. Sequential Monte Carlo with approximate Bayesian computations (SMC-ABC) is one approach to approximate the…
Approximate inference methods like the Laplace method, Laplace approximations and variational methods, amongst others, are popular methods when exact inference is not feasible due to the complexity of the model or the abundance of data. In…
We develop variational Laplace for Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) which exploits a local approximation of the curvature of the likelihood to estimate the ELBO without the need for stochastic sampling of the neural-network weights. The…
We develop variational Laplace for Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) which exploits a local approximation of the curvature of the likelihood to estimate the ELBO without the need for stochastic sampling of the neural-network weights. The…
Logistic Gaussian process (LGP) priors provide a flexible alternative for modelling unknown densities. The smoothness properties of the density estimates can be controlled through the prior covariance structure of the LGP, but the challenge…
Bayesian predictive inference propagates parameter uncertainty to quantities of interest through the posterior-predictive distribution. In practice, this is typically performed using a two-stage procedure: first approximating the posterior…
In recent years, inconsistency in Bayesian deep learning has attracted significant attention. Tempered or generalized posterior distributions are frequently employed as direct and effective solutions. Nonetheless, the underlying mechanisms…
Gaussian variational inference and the Laplace approximation are popular alternatives to Markov chain Monte Carlo that formulate Bayesian posterior inference as an optimization problem, enabling the use of simple and scalable stochastic…
Variational Bayes (VB) is a recent approximate method for Bayesian inference. It has the merit of being a fast and scalable alternative to Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) but its approximation error is often unknown. In this paper, we…
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…