Related papers: A deterministic and computable Bernstein-von Mises…
Bayesian inference requires approximation methods to become computable, but for most of them it is impossible to quantify how close the approximation is to the true posterior. In this work, we present a theorem upper-bounding the KL…
$\alpha$-posteriors and their variational approximations distort standard posterior inference by downweighting the likelihood and introducing variational approximation errors. We show that such distortions, if tuned appropriately, reduce…
The Bernstein-von Mises theorem (BvM) gives conditions under which the posterior distribution of a parameter $\theta\in\Theta\subseteq\mathbb R^d$ based on $n$ independent samples is asymptotically normal. In the high-dimensional regime, a…
The inferential model (IM) framework offers alternatives to the familiar probabilistic (e.g., Bayesian and fiducial) uncertainty quantification in statistical inference. Allowing this uncertainty quantification to be imprecise makes it…
We study the Kullback--Leibler (KL) divergence approximation theory of Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) by isolating an abstract mechanism behind several necessary-and-sufficient statements. The necessity direction is universal: if a density…
We present theoretical properties of the log-concave maximum likelihood estimator of a density based on an independent and identically distributed sample in $\mathbb{R}^d$. Our study covers both the case where the true underlying density is…
A loss function measures the discrepancy between the true values (observations) and their estimated fits, for a given instance of data. A loss function is said to be proper (unbiased, Fisher consistent) if the fits are defined over a unit…
Laplace's method approximates a target density with a Gaussian distribution at its mode. It is computationally efficient and asymptotically exact for Bayesian inference due to the Bernstein-von Mises theorem, but for complex targets and…
The classical parametric and semiparametric Bernstein -- von Mises (BvM) results are reconsidered in a non-classical setup allowing finite samples and model misspecification. In the case of a finite dimensional nuisance parameter we obtain…
A key challenge for modern Bayesian statistics is how to perform scalable inference of posterior distributions. To address this challenge, variational Bayes (VB) methods have emerged as a popular alternative to the classical Markov chain…
We study the approximation of arbitrary distributions $P$ on $d$-dimensional space by distributions with log-concave density. Approximation means minimizing a Kullback--Leibler-type functional. We show that such an approximation exists if…
This paper concerns the approximation of probability measures on $\mathbf{R}^d$ with respect to the Kullback-Leibler divergence. Given an admissible target measure, we show the existence of the best approximation, with respect to this…
We prove new, general versions of Bernstein-von Mises theorem for both well-specified and misspecified models when the log-likelihood is concave in the parameter and the prior distribution is log-concave. Unlike classical versions of…
The Laplace approximation is a popular method for constructing a Gaussian approximation to the Bayesian posterior and thereby approximating the posterior mean and variance. But approximation quality is a concern. One might consider using…
Bayesian coresets speed up posterior inference in the large-scale data regime by approximating the full-data log-likelihood function with a surrogate log-likelihood based on a small, weighted subset of the data. But while Bayesian coresets…
A Bernstein-von Mises theorem is derived for general semiparametric functionals. The result is applied to a variety of semiparametric problems in i.i.d. and non-i.i.d. situations. In particular, new tools are developed to handle…
This paper shows that large nonparametric classes of conditional multivariate densities can be approximated in the Kullback--Leibler distance by different specifications of finite mixtures of normal regressions in which normal means and…
In this paper we provide an asymptotic theory for the symmetric version of the Kullback--Leibler (KL) divergence. We define a estimator for this divergence and study its asymptotic properties. In particular, we prove Law of Large Numbers…
The inferential model (IM) framework offers an alternative to the classical probabilistic (e.g., Bayesian and fiducial) uncertainty quantification in statistical inference. A key distinction is that classical uncertainty quantification…
A loss function measures the discrepancy between the true values and their estimated fits, for a given instance of data. In classification problems, a loss function is said to be proper if a minimizer of the expected loss is the true…