Related papers: CATVI: Conditional and Adaptively Truncated Variat…
We present Sequential Neural Variational Inference (SNVI), an approach to perform Bayesian inference in models with intractable likelihoods. SNVI combines likelihood-estimation (or likelihood-ratio-estimation) with variational inference to…
We develop unbiased implicit variational inference (UIVI), a method that expands the applicability of variational inference by defining an expressive variational family. UIVI considers an implicit variational distribution obtained in a…
Black-box variational inference (BBVI) now sees widespread use in machine learning and statistics as a fast yet flexible alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for approximate Bayesian inference. However, stochastic optimization…
This paper proposes a non-centered parameterization based infinite-dimensional mean-field variational inference (NCP-iMFVI) approach for solving the hierarchical Bayesian inverse problems. This method can generate available estimates from…
The recognition network in deep latent variable models such as variational autoencoders (VAEs) relies on amortized inference for efficient posterior approximation that can scale up to large datasets. However, this technique has also been…
In this paper, we study the trade-offs of different inference approaches for Bayesian matrix factorisation methods, which are commonly used for predicting missing values, and for finding patterns in the data. In particular, we consider…
Semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI) has been introduced to expand the analytical variational families by defining expressive semi-implicit distributions in a hierarchical manner. However, the single-layer architecture commonly used…
Reconstructing the evolutionary history relating a collection of molecular sequences is the main subject of modern Bayesian phylogenetic inference. However, the commonly used Markov chain Monte Carlo methods can be inefficient due to the…
Group factor analysis (GFA) methods have been widely used to infer the common structure and the group-specific signals from multiple related datasets in various fields including systems biology and neuroimaging. To date, most available GFA…
Variational inference (VI) combined with data subsampling enables approximate posterior inference over large data sets, but suffers from poor local optima. We first formulate a deterministic annealing approach for the generic class of…
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…
Variational Bayes (VB) inference algorithm is used widely to estimate both the parameters and the unobserved hidden variables in generative statistical models. The algorithm -- inspired by variational methods used in computational physics…
Black-box variational inference (BBVI) scales poorly to high-dimensional problems when it is used to estimate a multivariate Gaussian approximation with a full covariance matrix. In this paper, we extend the batch-and-match (BaM) framework…
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…
Inference networks of traditional Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) are typically amortized, resulting in relatively inaccurate posterior approximation compared to instance-wise variational optimization. Recent semi-amortized approaches were…
The core principle of Variational Inference (VI) is to convert the statistical inference problem of computing complex posterior probability densities into a tractable optimization problem. This property enables VI to be faster than several…
It is difficult to use subsampling with variational inference in hierarchical models since the number of local latent variables scales with the dataset. Thus, inference in hierarchical models remains a challenge at large scale. It is…
Deep learning has revolutionized the last decade, being at the forefront of extraordinary advances in a wide range of tasks including computer vision, natural language processing, and reinforcement learning, to name but a few. However, it…
Variational inference has become an increasingly attractive fast alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for approximate Bayesian inference. However, a major obstacle to the widespread use of variational methods is the lack of…
Automatic Differentiation Variational Inference (ADVI) is efficient in learning probabilistic models. Classic ADVI relies on the parametric approach to approximate the posterior. In this paper, we develop a spline-based nonparametric…