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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…
Variational inference with {\alpha}-divergences has been widely used in modern probabilistic machine learning. Compared to Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence, a major advantage of using {\alpha}-divergences (with positive {\alpha} values) is…
In this paper we propose an efficient stochastic optimization algorithm to search for Bayesian experimental designs such that the expected information gain is maximized. The gradient of the expected information gain with respect to…
We consider stochastic optimization when one only has access to biased stochastic oracles of the objective and the gradient, and obtaining stochastic gradients with low biases comes at high costs. This setting captures various optimization…
Variable selection in Gaussian processes (GPs) is typically undertaken by thresholding the inverse lengthscales of automatic relevance determination kernels, but in high-dimensional datasets this approach can be unreliable. A more…
Discrete choice models describe the choices made by decision makers among alternatives and play an important role in transportation planning, marketing research and other applications. The mixed multinomial logit (MMNL) model is a popular…
Practitioners of Bayesian statistics have long depended on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to obtain samples from intractable posterior distributions. Unfortunately, MCMC algorithms are typically serial, and do not scale to the large…
Recently, Stochastic Gradient Markov Chain Monte Carlo (SG-MCMC) methods have been proposed for scaling up Monte Carlo computations to large data problems. Whilst these approaches have proven useful in many applications, vanilla SG-MCMC…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are generally regarded as the gold standard technique for Bayesian inference. They are theoretically well-understood and conceptually simple to apply in practice. The drawback of MCMC is that in…
Black box variational inference (BBVI) with reparameterization gradients triggered the exploration of divergence measures other than the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence, such as alpha divergences. In this paper, we view BBVI with…
It is now widely accepted that knowledge can be acquired from networks by clustering their vertices according to connection profiles. Many methods have been proposed and in this paper we concentrate on the Stochastic Block Model (SBM). The…
It is important to estimate the errors of probabilistic inference algorithms. Existing diagnostics for Markov chain Monte Carlo methods assume inference is asymptotically exact, and are not appropriate for approximate methods like…
Two standard models for probabilistic systems are Markov chains (MCs) and Markov decision processes (MDPs). Classic objectives for such probabilistic models for control and planning problems are reachability and stochastic shortest path.…
Models with a large number of latent variables are often used to fully utilize the information in big or complex data. However, they can be difficult to estimate using standard approaches, and variational inference methods are a popular…
In this paper we propose new algorithms for solving a class of structured monotone variational inequality (VI) problems over compact feasible sets. By identifying the gradient components existing in the operator of VI, we show that it is…
Gradient-based Monte Carlo sampling algorithms, like Langevin dynamics and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, are important methods for Bayesian inference. In large-scale settings, full-gradients are not affordable and thus stochastic gradients…
In a first part, we present a mathematical analysis of a general methodology of a probabilistic learning inference that allows for estimating a posterior probability model for a stochastic boundary value problem from a prior probability…
This paper presents a novel variational inference framework for deriving a family of Bayesian sparse Gaussian process regression (SGPR) models whose approximations are variationally optimal with respect to the full-rank GPR model enriched…
This paper studies the estimation of low-rank Markov chains from empirical trajectories. We propose a non-convex estimator based on rank-constrained likelihood maximization. Statistical upper bounds are provided for the Kullback-Leiber…
PAC-Bayesian set up involves a stochastic classifier characterized by a posterior distribution on a classifier set, offers a high probability bound on its averaged true risk and is robust to the training sample used. For a given posterior,…