Related papers: Amortized variance reduction for doubly stochastic…
Inference in Gaussian process (GP) models is computationally challenging for large data, and often difficult to approximate with a small number of inducing points. We explore an alternative approximation that employs stochastic inference…
Stochastic convex optimization algorithms are the most popular way to train machine learning models on large-scale data. Scaling up the training process of these models is crucial, but the most popular algorithm, Stochastic Gradient Descent…
The mini-batch stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm is widely used in training machine learning models, in particular deep learning models. We study SGD dynamics under linear regression and two-layer linear networks, with an easy…
In stochastic variational inference, the variational Bayes objective function is optimized using stochastic gradient approximation, where gradients computed on small random subsets of data are used to approximate the true gradient over the…
We develop an efficient stochastic variance reduced gradient descent algorithm to solve the affine rank minimization problem consists of finding a matrix of minimum rank from linear measurements. The proposed algorithm as a stochastic…
Optimal control under uncertainty is a prevailing challenge for many reasons. One of the critical difficulties lies in producing tractable solutions for the underlying stochastic optimization problem. We show how advanced approximate…
We present a new algorithm for approximate inference in probabilistic programs, based on a stochastic gradient for variational programs. This method is efficient without restrictions on the probabilistic program; it is particularly…
Monte Carlo sampling techniques have broad applications in machine learning, Bayesian posterior inference, and parameter estimation. Often the target distribution takes the form of a product distribution over a dataset with a large number…
Dual control explicitly addresses the problem of trading off active exploration and exploitation in the optimal control of partially unknown systems. While the problem can be cast in the framework of stochastic dynamic programming, exact…
We explore efficient estimation of statistical quantities, particularly rare event probabilities, for stochastic reaction networks. Consequently, we propose an importance sampling (IS) approach to improve the Monte Carlo (MC) estimator…
Many stochastic optimization algorithms work by estimating the gradient of the cost function on the fly by sampling datapoints uniformly at random from a training set. However, the estimator might have a large variance, which inadvertently…
We propose a mini-batching scheme for improving the theoretical complexity and practical performance of semi-stochastic gradient descent applied to the problem of minimizing a strongly convex composite function represented as the sum of an…
The paper considers the problem of network-based computation of global minima in smooth nonconvex optimization problems. It is known that distributed gradient-descent-type algorithms can achieve convergence to the set of global minima by…
In this paper, a stochastic algorithm for the efficient simulation and optimal control of networked wave equations based on the random batch method is proposed and analyzed. The random approximation is constructed by dividing the time…
We focus on solving constrained convex optimization problems using mini-batch stochastic gradient descent. Dynamic sample size rules are presented which ensure a descent direction with high probability. Empirical results from two…
Stochastic optimization techniques are standard in variational inference algorithms. These methods estimate gradients by approximating expectations with independent Monte Carlo samples. In this paper, we explore a technique that uses…
Gaussian variational approximation is a popular methodology to approximate posterior distributions in Bayesian inference especially in high dimensional and large data settings. To control the computational cost while being able to capture…
A new method for stochastic control based on neural networks and using randomisation of discrete random variables is proposed and applied to optimal stopping time problems. The method models directly the policy and does not need the…
We study distributed optimization problems over a network when the communication between the nodes is constrained, and so information that is exchanged between the nodes must be quantized. This imperfect communication poses a fundamental…
Self-paced learning and hard example mining re-weight training instances to improve learning accuracy. This paper presents two improved alternatives based on lightweight estimates of sample uncertainty in stochastic gradient descent (SGD):…