Related papers: Unbiased MLMC stochastic gradient-based optimizati…
In this paper, we propose a new stochastic optimization algorithm for Bayesian inference based on multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) methods. In Bayesian statistics, biased estimators of the model evidence have been often used as stochastic…
The expected information gain is an important quality criterion of Bayesian experimental designs, which measures how much the information entropy about uncertain quantity of interest $\theta$ is reduced on average by collecting relevant…
We study stochastic gradient descent for solving conditional stochastic optimization problems, in which an objective to be minimized is given by a parametric nested expectation with an outer expectation taken with respect to one random…
An optimal experimental set-up maximizes the value of data for statistical inferences and predictions. The efficiency of strategies for finding optimal experimental set-ups is particularly important for experiments that are time-consuming…
Optimal experimental design (OED) seeks experiments expected to yield the most useful data for some purpose. In practical circumstances where experiments are time-consuming or resource-intensive, OED can yield enormous savings. We pursue…
We introduce a fully stochastic gradient based approach to Bayesian optimal experimental design (BOED). Our approach utilizes variational lower bounds on the expected information gain (EIG) of an experiment that can be simultaneously…
Bayesian Experimental Design (BED), which aims to find the optimal experimental conditions for Bayesian inference, is usually posed as to optimize the expected information gain (EIG). The gradient information is often needed for efficient…
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…
We study Monte Carlo estimation of the expected value of sample information (EVSI) which measures the expected benefit of gaining additional information for decision making under uncertainty. EVSI is defined as a nested expectation in which…
Variational Bayes (VB) is a popular tool for Bayesian inference in statistical modeling. Recently, some VB algorithms are proposed to handle intractable likelihoods with applications such as approximate Bayesian computation. In this paper,…
In this paper, we present a multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) version of the Stochastic Gradient (SG) method for optimization under uncertainty, in order to tackle Optimal Control Problems (OCP) where the constraints are described in the form…
Stochastic optimization in learning and inference often relies on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to approximate gradients when exact computation is intractable. However, finite-time MCMC estimators are biased, and reducing this bias…
In this article we develop a new sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) method for multilevel (ML) Monte Carlo estimation. In particular, the method can be used to estimate expectations with respect to a target probability distribution over an…
Constructing unbiased estimators from Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) outputs is a difficult problem that has recently received a lot of attention in the statistics and machine learning communities. However, the current unbiased MCMC…
Finding the best setup for experiments is the primary concern for Optimal Experimental Design (OED). Here, we focus on the Bayesian experimental design problem of finding the setup that maximizes the Shannon expected information gain. We…
We leverage multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) to improve the performance of multi-step look-ahead Bayesian optimization (BO) methods that involve nested expectations and maximizations. Often these expectations must be computed by Monte Carlo…
Performing numerical integration when the integrand itself cannot be evaluated point-wise is a challenging task that arises in statistical analysis, notably in Bayesian inference for models with intractable likelihood functions. Markov…
Bayesian max-margin models have shown superiority in various practical applications, such as text categorization, collaborative prediction, social network link prediction and crowdsourcing, and they conjoin the flexibility of Bayesian…
Bayesian optimal experimental design provides a principled framework for selecting experimental settings that maximize obtained information. In this work, we focus on estimating the expected information gain in the setting where the…
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…