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Bayesian (deep) neural networks (BNN) are often more attractive than the vanilla point-estimate deep learning in various aspects including uncertainty quantification, robustness to noise, resistance to overfitting, and more. The variational…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Minyoung Kim

Recent years have witnessed growing interest in semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI) methods due to their ability to rapidly generate samples from complex distributions. However, since the likelihood of these samples is non-trivial to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-05 Tobias Pielok , Bernd Bischl , David Rügamer

Stochastic Gradient Descent with a constant learning rate (constant SGD) simulates a Markov chain with a stationary distribution. With this perspective, we derive several new results. (1) We show that constant SGD can be used as an…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-01-23 Stephan Mandt , Matthew D. Hoffman , David M. Blei

Most applications of Bayesian Inference for parameter estimation and model selection in astrophysics involve the use of Monte Carlo techniques such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and nested sampling. However, these techniques are time…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2022-01-26 Geetakrishnasai Gunapati , Anirudh Jain , P. K. Srijith , Shantanu Desai

We introduce a class of generic spike-and-slab priors for high-dimensional linear regression with grouped variables and present a Coordinate-ascent Variational Inference (CAVI) algorithm for obtaining an optimal variational Bayes…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-10-02 Buyu Lin , Changhao Ge , Jun S. Liu

We propose stepwise variational inference (VI) with vine copulas: a universal VI procedure that combines vine copulas with a novel stepwise estimation procedure of the variational parameters. Vine copulas consist of a nested sequence of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-25 Elisabeth Griesbauer , Leiv Rønneberg , Arnoldo Frigessi , Claudia Czado , Ingrid Hobæk Haff

We propose a variational Bayesian (VB) procedure for high-dimensional linear model inferences with heavy tail shrinkage priors, such as student-t prior. Theoretically, we establish the consistency of the proposed VB method and prove that…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-27 Jincheng Bai , Qifan Song , Guang Cheng

The stochastic variational inference (SVI) paradigm, which combines variational inference, natural gradients, and stochastic updates, was recently proposed for large-scale data analysis in conjugate Bayesian models and demonstrated to be…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-02-05 Rishit Sheth , Roni Khardon

Stochastic variational inference for collapsed models has recently been successfully applied to large scale topic modelling. In this paper, we propose a stochastic collapsed variational inference algorithm for hidden Markov models, in a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-12-08 Pengyu Wang , Phil Blunsom

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Andrew Millard , Joshua Murphy , Peter Green , Simon Maskell

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-10-20 Manuel Glöckler , Michael Deistler , Jakob H. Macke

A new method called "variational sampling" is proposed to estimate integrals under probability distributions that can be evaluated up to a normalizing constant. The key idea is to fit the target distribution with an exponential family model…

Computation · Statistics 2013-10-15 Alexis Roche

We aim to incorporate variable selection routines into variable-by-variable (or sequential) imputation in clustered data to achieve computational improvement in applications with large-scale health data. Specifically, we utilize variable…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-04-08 Qiushuang Li , Recai Yucel

Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) is a framework for performing likelihood-free posterior inference for simulation models. Stochastic Variational inference (SVI) is an appealing alternative to the inefficient sampling approaches…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-06-29 Alexander Moreno , Tameem Adel , Edward Meeds , James M. Rehg , Max Welling

Employing Bayesian inference to calibrate constitutive model parameters has grown substantially in recent years. Among the available techniques, Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling remains one of the most widely used approaches for…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Aricia Rinkens , Rodrigo L. S. Silva , Erik Quaeghebeur , Nick Jaensson , Clemens Verhoosel

Understanding stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its variants is essential for machine learning. However, most of the preceding analyses are conducted under amenable conditions such as unbiased gradient estimator and bounded objective…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-03-26 Tianyou Li , Fan Chen , Huajie Chen , Zaiwen Wen

In variational inference (VI), an approximation of the posterior distribution is selected from a family of distributions through numerical optimization. With the most common variational objective function, known as the evidence lower bound…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-01-15 Declan McNamara , Jackson Loper , Jeffrey Regier

Approximating a probability density in a tractable manner is a central task in Bayesian statistics. Variational Inference (VI) is a popular technique that achieves tractability by choosing a relatively simple variational family. Borrowing…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-11-30 Francesco Locatello , Gideon Dresdner , Rajiv Khanna , Isabel Valera , Gunnar Rätsch

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…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-14 Laura Battaglia , Stefano Cortinovis , Chris Holmes , David T. Frazier , Jack Jewson

The generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) is widely used for analyzing correlated data, particularly in large-scale biomedical and social science applications. Scalable Bayesian inference for GLMMs is challenging because the marginal…

Computation · Statistics 2026-01-07 Samuel I. Berchuck , Youngsoo Baek , Felipe A. Medeiros , Andrea Agazzi