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Related papers: MCMC-Interactive Variational Inference

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We introduce a new Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampler called the Markov Interacting Importance Sampler (MIIS). The MIIS sampler uses conditional importance sampling (IS) approximations to jointly sample the current state of the Markov…

Computation · Statistics 2015-06-26 Eduardo F. Mendes , Marcel Scharth , Robert Kohn

We introduce a new algorithm for approximate inference that combines reparametrization, Markov chain Monte Carlo and variational methods. We construct a very flexible implicit variational distribution synthesized by an arbitrary Markov…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-08-07 Michalis K. Titsias

Posterior sampling is a task of central importance in Bayesian inference. For many applications in Bayesian meta-analysis and Bayesian transfer learning, the prior distribution is unknown and needs to be estimated from samples. In practice,…

Computation · Statistics 2024-08-06 Chenyang Zhong , Shouxuan Ji , Tian Zheng

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a powerful methodology for the approximation of posterior distributions. However, the iterative nature of MCMC does not naturally facilitate its use with modern highly parallel computation on HPC and cloud…

We propose a new class of learning algorithms that combines variational approximation and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation. Naive algorithms that use the variational approximation as proposal distribution can perform poorly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-01-14 Nando de Freitas , Pedro Hojen-Sorensen , Michael I. Jordan , Stuart Russell

Variational Inference (VI) is an attractive alternative to Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) due to its computational efficiency in the case of large datasets and/or complex models with high-dimensional parameters. However, evaluating the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-02-27 Yu Wang , Mikołaj Kasprzak , Jonathan H. Huggins

We introduce a framework for efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms targeting discrete-valued high-dimensional distributions, such as posterior distributions in Bayesian variable selection (BVS) problems. We show that many…

Computation · Statistics 2021-10-28 Xitong Liang , Samuel Livingstone , Jim Griffin

We extend the existing framework of semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI) and introduce doubly semi-implicit variational inference (DSIVI), a way to perform variational inference and learning when both the approximate posterior and the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-03-19 Dmitry Molchanov , Valery Kharitonov , Artem Sobolev , Dmitry Vetrov

Along with Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, variational inference (VI) has emerged as a central computational approach to large-scale Bayesian inference. Rather than sampling from the true posterior $\pi$, VI aims at producing a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-04-24 Marc Lambert , Sinho Chewi , Francis Bach , Silvère Bonnabel , Philippe Rigollet

Many Bayesian inference problems require exploring the posterior distribution of high-dimensional parameters that represent the discretization of an underlying function. This work introduces a family of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)…

Computation · Statistics 2016-05-03 Tiangang Cui , Kody J. H. Law , Youssef M. Marzouk

Variational Bayesian (VB) methods produce posterior inference in a time frame considerably smaller than traditional Markov Chain Monte Carlo approaches. Although the VB posterior is an approximation, it has been shown to produce good…

Computation · Statistics 2019-08-02 Nathaniel Tomasetti , Catherine S. Forbes , Anastasios Panagiotelis

The multinomial probit (MNP) model is widely used to analyze categorical outcomes due to its ability to capture flexible substitution patterns among alternatives. Conventional likelihood based and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimators…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-01-08 Gyeongjun Kim , Yeseul Kang , Lucas Kock , Prateek Bansal , Keemin Sohn

Variational inference (VI) is a popular method for approximating intractable posterior distributions in Bayesian inference and probabilistic machine learning. In this paper, we introduce a general framework for quantifying the statistical…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-07-18 Chenyang Zhong , Sumit Mukherjee , Bodhisattva Sen

Bayesian analyses combine information represented by different terms in a joint Bayesian model. When one or more of the terms is misspecified, it can be helpful to restrict the use of information from suspect model components to modify…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-06-27 Xuejun Yu , David J. Nott , Michael Stanley Smith

Variational inference lies at the core of many state-of-the-art algorithms. To improve the approximation of the posterior beyond parametric families, it was proposed to include MCMC steps into the variational lower bound. In this work we…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-09-28 Christopher Wolf , Maximilian Karl , Patrick van der Smagt

Envelope models provide a sufficient dimension reduction framework for multivariate regression analysis. Bayesian inference for these models has been developed primarily using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. Specifically, Gibbs…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-03 Seunghyeon Kim , Kwangmin Lee , Yeonhee Park

This is a course project report with complete methodology, experiments, references and mathematical derivations. Matrix factorization [1] is a widely used technique in recommendation systems. Probabilistic Matrix Factorization (PMF) [2]…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-16 Ruixuan Xu , Xiangxiang Weng

We present new MCMC algorithms for computing the posterior distributions and expectations of the unknown variables in undirected graphical models with regular structure. For demonstration purposes, we focus on Markov Random Fields (MRFs).…

Computation · Statistics 2012-07-19 Firas Hamze , Nando de Freitas

Reconstructing the evolutionary history relating a collection of molecular sequences is the main subject of modern Bayesian phylogenetic inference. However, the commonly used Markov chain Monte Carlo methods can be inefficient due to the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-08-12 Tianyu Xie , Frederick A. Matsen , Marc A. Suchard , Cheng Zhang

We introduce a gradient-based learning method to automatically adapt Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) proposal distributions to intractable targets. We define a maximum entropy regularised objective function, referred to as generalised speed…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-01-07 Michalis K. Titsias , Petros Dellaportas