Related papers: CATVI: Conditional and Adaptively Truncated Variat…
Approximate inference in high-dimensional, discrete probabilistic models is a central problem in computational statistics and machine learning. This paper describes discrete particle variational inference (DPVI), a new approach that…
Bayesian inference allows us to define a posterior distribution over the weights of a generic neural network (NN). Exact posteriors are usually intractable, in which case approximations can be employed. One such approximation - variational…
We propose a new Bayesian Neural Net formulation that affords variational inference for which the evidence lower bound is analytically tractable subject to a tight approximation. We achieve this tractability by (i) decomposing ReLU…
Many machine learning problems involve Monte Carlo gradient estimators. As a prominent example, we focus on Monte Carlo variational inference (MCVI) in this paper. The performance of MCVI crucially depends on the variance of its stochastic…
We derive a novel variational expectation maximization approach based on truncated posterior distributions. Truncated distributions are proportional to exact posteriors within subsets of a discrete state space and equal zero otherwise. The…
In this paper we consider a non-monotone (mixed) variational inequality model with (nonlinear) convex conic constraints. Through developing an equivalent Lagrangian function-like primal-dual saddle-point system for the VI model in question,…
Few Bayesian methods for analyzing high-dimensional sparse survival data provide scalable variable selection, effect estimation and uncertainty quantification. Such methods often either sacrifice uncertainty quantification by computing…
Collected data, which is used for analysis or prediction tasks, often have a hierarchical structure, for example, data from various people performing the same task. Modeling the data's structure can improve the reliability of the derived…
Stochastic Natural Gradient Variational Inference (NGVI) is a widely used method for approximating posterior distribution in probabilistic models. Despite its empirical success and foundational role in variational inference, its theoretical…
Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) have recently regained a significant amount of attention in the deep learning community due to the development of scalable approximate Bayesian inference techniques. There are several advantages of using a…
We introduce the Variational Holder (VH) bound as an alternative to Variational Bayes (VB) for approximate Bayesian inference. Unlike VB which typically involves maximization of a non-convex lower bound with respect to the variational…
Bayesian inference provides principled uncertainty quantification, but accurate posterior sampling with MCMC can be computationally prohibitive for modern applications. Variational inference (VI) offers a scalable alternative and often…
The Cut posterior and related Semi-Modular Inference are Generalised Bayes methods for Modular Bayesian evidence combination. Analysis is broken up over modular sub-models of the joint posterior distribution. Model-misspecification in…
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).…
Over-parameterized models, such as DeepNets and ConvNets, form a class of models that are routinely adopted in a wide variety of applications, and for which Bayesian inference is desirable but extremely challenging. Variational inference…
There has been much recent interest in modifying Bayesian inference for misspecified models so that it is useful for specific purposes. One popular modified Bayesian inference method is "cutting feedback" which can be used when the model…
We develop a version of variational inference for Bayesian count response regression-type models that possesses attractive attributes such as convexity and closed form updates. The convex solution aspect entails numerically stable fitting…
Variational Bayesian inference and (collapsed) Gibbs sampling are the two important classes of inference algorithms for Bayesian networks. Both have their advantages and disadvantages: collapsed Gibbs sampling is unbiased but is also…
Accurate tuning of hyperparameters is crucial to ensure that models can generalise effectively across different settings. In this paper, we present theoretical guarantees for hyperparameter selection using variational Bayes in the…
Bayesian inference provides an attractive online-learning framework to analyze sequential data, and offers generalization guarantees which hold even with model mismatch and adversaries. Unfortunately, exact Bayesian inference is rarely…