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This paper proposes a novel parameter selection strategy for kernel-based gradient descent (KGD) algorithms, integrating bias-variance analysis with the splitting method. We introduce the concept of empirical effective dimension to quantify…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-05 Xiaotong Liu , Yunwen Lei , Xiangyu Chang , Shao-Bo Lin

Bayesian computation plays an important role in modern machine learning and statistics to reason about uncertainty. A key computational challenge in Bayesian inference is to develop efficient techniques to approximate, or draw samples from…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-09-01 Liang Yan , Tao Zhou

We propose a novel distributed inference algorithm for continuous graphical models, by extending Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) to leverage the Markov dependency structure of the distribution of interest. Our approach combines…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-06-11 Dilin Wang , Zhe Zeng , Qiang Liu

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) and its variants have shown promising successes in approximate inference for complex distributions. In practice, we notice that the kernel used in SVGD-based methods has a decisive effect on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-29 Qingzhong Ai , Shiyu Liu , Lirong He , Zenglin Xu

Stochastic gradient descent algorithms for training linear and kernel predictors are gaining more and more importance, thanks to their scalability. While various methods have been proposed to speed up their convergence, the model selection…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-06-17 Francesco Orabona

Particle-based approximate Bayesian inference approaches such as Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) combine the flexibility and convergence guarantees of sampling methods with the computational benefits of variational inference. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-30 Lauro Langosco di Langosco , Vincent Fortuin , Heiko Strathmann

To accurately reproduce measurements from the real world, simulators need to have an adequate model of the physical system and require the parameters of the model be identified. We address the latter problem of estimating parameters through…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-03-01 Eric Heiden , Christopher E. Denniston , David Millard , Fabio Ramos , Gaurav S. Sukhatme

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a kernel-based and non-parametric particle method for sampling from a target distribution, such as in Bayesian inference and other machine learning tasks. Different from other particle methods,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-02 Viktor Stein , Wuchen Li

In this paper, we study a Markov chain-based stochastic gradient algorithm in general Hilbert spaces, aiming at approximating the optimal solution of a quadratic loss function. We establish probabilistic upper bounds on its convergence. We…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-12-16 Priyanka Roy , Susanne Saminger-Platz

We propose a simple algorithm to train stochastic neural networks to draw samples from given target distributions for probabilistic inference. Our method is based on iteratively adjusting the neural network parameters so that the output…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-11-01 Yihao Feng , Dilin Wang , Qiang Liu

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) refers to a class of methods for Bayesian inference based on interacting particle systems. In this paper, we consider the originally proposed deterministic dynamics as well as a stochastic variant,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-26 Nikolas Nüsken , D. R. Michiel Renger

We consider a class of statistical inverse problems involving the estimation of a regression operator from a Polish space to a separable Hilbert space, where the target lies in a vector-valued reproducing kernel Hilbert space induced by an…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-28 Jia-Qi Yang , Lei Shi

We provide the first finite-particle convergence rate for Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD), a popular algorithm for approximating a probability distribution with a collection of particles. Specifically, whenever the target…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-03 Jiaxin Shi , Lester Mackey

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a particle-based inference algorithm that leverages gradient information for efficient approximate inference. In this work, we enhance SVGD by leveraging preconditioning matrices, such as the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-11-06 Dilin Wang , Ziyang Tang , Chandrajit Bajaj , Qiang Liu

Ensembles of deep neural networks have achieved great success recently, but they do not offer a proper Bayesian justification. Moreover, while they allow for averaging of predictions over several hypotheses, they do not provide any…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-23 Francesco D'Angelo , Vincent Fortuin , Florian Wenzel

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a prominent particle-based variational inference method used for sampling a target distribution. SVGD has attracted interest for application in machine-learning techniques such as Bayesian…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-26 Yuya Kawamura , Satoshi Takabe

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a kernel-based particle method for sampling from a target distribution, e.g., in generative modeling and Bayesian inference. SVGD does not require estimating the gradient of the log-density,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-04-10 Viktor Stein , Wuchen Li

We study an interacting particle system in $\mathbf{R}^d$ motivated by Stein variational gradient descent [Q. Liu and D. Wang, NIPS 2016], a deterministic algorithm for sampling from a given probability density with unknown normalization.…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2018-11-07 Jianfeng Lu , Yulong Lu , James Nolen

We present a new particle filtering algorithm for nonlinear systems in the discrete-time setting. Our algorithm is based on the Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) framework, which is a general approach to sample from a target…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2021-06-22 Jiaojiao Fan , Amirhossein Taghvaei , Yongxin Chen

Multilevel Stein variational gradient descent is a method for particle-based variational inference that leverages hierarchies of surrogate target distributions with varying costs and fidelity to computationally speed up inference. The…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2023-05-02 Terrence Alsup , Tucker Hartland , Benjamin Peherstorfer , Noemi Petra