Related papers: Learning Deep Generative Models with Annealed Impo…

In conducting non-linear dimensionality reduction and feature learning, it is common to suppose that the data lie near a lower-dimensional manifold. A class of model-based approaches for such problems includes latent variables in an unknown…

We consider importance sampling (IS) type weighted estimators based on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) targeting an approximate marginal of the target distribution. In the context of Bayesian latent variable models, the MCMC typically…

Recent advances in Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) extend the scope of Bayesian inference to models for which the likelihood function is intractable. Although these developments allow us to estimate model parameters, other basic problems…

In parameter estimation problems one computes a posterior distribution over uncertain parameters defined jointly by a prior distribution, a model, and noisy data. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is often used for the numerical solution of…

Importance sampling (IS) is commonly used for cross validation (CV) in Bayesian models, because it only involves reweighting existing posterior draws without needing to re-estimate the model by re-running Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC).…

Simulated annealing - moving from a tractable distribution to a distribution of interest via a sequence of intermediate distributions - has traditionally been used as an inexact method of handling isolated modes in Markov chain samplers.…

Bayesian model selection enables comparison and ranking of conceptual subsurface models described by spatial prior models, according to the support provided by available geophysical data. Deep generative neural networks can efficiently…

We present a new method for conducting Monte Carlo inference in graphical models which combines explicit search with generalized importance sampling. The idea is to reduce the variance of importance sampling by searching for significant…

The variational auto-encoder (VAE) is a deep latent variable model that has two neural networks in an autoencoder-like architecture; one of them parameterizes the model's likelihood. Fitting its parameters via maximum likelihood (ML) is…

Hierarchical models represent a challenging setting for inference algorithms. MCMC methods struggle to scale to large models with many local variables and observations, and variational inference (VI) may fail to provide accurate…

Bayesian inference under a set of priors, called robust Bayesian analysis, allows for estimation of parameters within a model and quantification of epistemic uncertainty in quantities of interest by bounded (or imprecise) probability.…

Variational autoencoders (VAEs) are latent variable models that can generate complex objects and provide meaningful latent representations. Moreover, they could be further used in downstream tasks such as classification. As previous work…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are fundamental to Bayesian computation, but can be computationally intensive, especially in high-dimensional settings. Push-forward generative models, such as generative adversarial networks (GANs),…

In this work, we develop an importance sampling estimator by coupling the reduced-order model and the generative model in a problem setting of uncertainty quantification. The target is to estimate the probability that the quantity of…

This study uses a Variational Autoencoder method to enhance the efficiency and applicability of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (McMC) methods by generating broader-spectrum prior proposals. Traditional approaches, such as the Karhunen-Lo\`eve…

We propose a novel method to learn intractable distributions from their samples. The main idea is to use a parametric distribution model, such as a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), to approximate intractable distributions by minimizing the…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are often used for approximate inference inside learning, but their slow mixing can be difficult to diagnose and the approximations can seriously degrade learning. To alleviate these issues, we…

We introduce a new algorithm for approximate inference that combines reparametrization, Markov chain Monte Carlo and variational methods. We construct a very flexible implicit variational distribution synthesized by an arbitrary Markov…

We develop a novel Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method that exploits a hierarchy of models of increasing complexity to efficiently generate samples from an unnormalized target distribution. Broadly, the method rewrites the Multilevel…

Bayesian methods have shown success in deep learning applications. For example, in predictive tasks, Bayesian neural networks leverage Bayesian reasoning of model uncertainty to improve the reliability and uncertainty awareness of deep…