Related papers: Understanding Variational Inference in Function-Sp…
Optimization in the Bures-Wasserstein space has been gaining popularity in the machine learning community since it draws connections between variational inference and Wasserstein gradient flows. The variational inference objective function…
The forward Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence is a ubiquitous objective for fitting a parameterized distribution to samples due to its tractability and equivalence to maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). Its inherent asymmetry, however, may…
We propose a vector-valued regression problem whose solution is equivalent to the reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) embedding of the Bayesian posterior distribution. This equivalence provides a new understanding of kernel Bayesian…
Weight space symmetries in neural network architectures, such as permutation symmetries in MLPs, give rise to Bayesian neural network (BNN) posteriors with many equivalent modes. This multimodality poses a challenge for variational…
Variational Bayesian posterior inference often requires simplifying approximations such as mean-field parametrisation to ensure tractability. However, prior work has associated the variational mean-field approximation for Bayesian neural…
Approximate Bayesian inference methods provide a powerful suite of tools for finding approximations to intractable posterior distributions. However, machine learning applications typically involve selecting actions, which -- in a Bayesian…
We develop a framework for generalized variational inference in infinite-dimensional function spaces and use it to construct a method termed Gaussian Wasserstein inference (GWI). GWI leverages the Wasserstein distance between Gaussian…
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…
Test-time guidance is a widely used mechanism for steering pretrained diffusion models toward outcomes specified by a reward function. Existing approaches, however, focus on maximizing reward rather than sampling from the true Bayesian…
We consider Bayesian shrinkage predictions for the Normal regression problem under the frequentist Kullback-Leibler risk function. Firstly, we consider the multivariate Normal model with an unknown mean and a known covariance. While the…
In inverse problems, the parameters of a model are estimated based on observations of the model response. The Bayesian approach is powerful for solving such problems; one formulates a prior distribution for the parameter state that is…
We investigate the use of normalizing flow (NF) models as flexible priors in Bayesian inference via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling for iterative Bayesian calibration. Trained on posteriors from previous analyses, these models can…
Variational inference (VI) is a popular approach in Bayesian inference, that looks for the best approximation of the posterior distribution within a parametric family, minimizing a loss that is typically the (reverse) Kullback-Leibler (KL)…
In this article, we investigate posterior convergence in nonparametric regression models where the unknown regression function is modeled by some appropriate stochastic process. In this regard, we consider two setups. The first setup is…
This short note is on a property of the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence which indicates that independent Gaussian distributions minimize the KL divergence from given independent Gaussian distributions. The primary purpose of this note is…
Variational Inference is a powerful tool in the Bayesian modeling toolkit, however, its effectiveness is determined by the expressivity of the utilized variational distributions in terms of their ability to match the true posterior…
The Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence is a fundamental equation of information theory that quantifies the proximity of two probability distributions. Although difficult to understand by examining the equation, an intuition and understanding…
Variational mean field approximations tend to struggle with contemporary overparametrized deep neural networks. Where a Bayesian treatment is usually associated with high-quality predictions and uncertainties, the practical reality has been…
Bayesian inference for complex models with an intractable likelihood can be tackled using algorithms performing many calls to computer simulators. These approaches are collectively known as "simulation-based inference" (SBI). Recent SBI…
Bayesian sequence prediction is a simple technique for predicting future symbols sampled from an unknown measure on infinite sequences over a countable alphabet. While strong bounds on the expected cumulative error are known, there are only…