Related papers: Variational Refinement for Importance Sampling Usi…
Importance sampling has been known as a powerful tool to reduce the variance of Monte Carlo estimator for rare event simulation. Based on the criterion of minimizing the variance of Monte Carlo estimator within a parametric family, we…
In this paper, we compare the performance of two methods for estimating Bayesian networks from data containing exogenous variables and random effects. The first method is fully Bayesian in which a prior distribution is placed on the…
The steady-state Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) makes it possible to incorporate prior information about the long-run mean of the process. This has been shown in many studies to substantially improve forecasting performance, and the…
We propose a family of variational approximations to Bayesian posterior distributions, called $\alpha$-VB, with provable statistical guarantees. The standard variational approximation is a special case of $\alpha$-VB with $\alpha=1$. When…
We consider the problem of time series forecasting in an adaptive setting. We focus on the inference of state-space models under unknown and potentially time-varying noise variances. We introduce an augmented model in which the variances…
We introduce a novel approach to boost the efficiency of the importance nested sampling (INS) technique for Bayesian posterior and evidence estimation using deep learning. Unlike rejection-based sampling methods such as vanilla nested…
We propose a method to fuse posterior distributions learned from heterogeneous datasets. Our algorithm relies on a mean field assumption for both the fused model and the individual dataset posteriors and proceeds using a simple…
Training generative models to sample from unnormalized density functions is an important and challenging task in machine learning. Traditional training methods often rely on the reverse Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence due to its…
Variational inference (VI) is a cornerstone of modern Bayesian learning, enabling approximate inference in complex models. However, its formulation depends on expectations and divergences defined through high-dimensional integrals, often…
Many probabilistic models of interest in scientific computing and machine learning have expensive, black-box likelihoods that prevent the application of standard techniques for Bayesian inference, such as MCMC, which would require access to…
Semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI) enhances the expressiveness of variational families through hierarchical semi-implicit distributions, but the intractability of their densities makes standard ELBO-based optimization biased. Recent…
We propose an adaptive importance sampling scheme for Gaussian approximations of intractable posteriors. Optimization-based approximations like variational inference can be too inaccurate while existing Monte Carlo methods can be too slow.…
Variational methods are employed in situations where exact Bayesian inference becomes intractable due to the difficulty in performing certain integrals. Typically, variational methods postulate a tractable posterior and formulate a lower…
Likelihood-free methods, such as approximate Bayesian computation, are powerful tools for practical inference problems with intractable likelihood functions. Markov chain Monte Carlo and sequential Monte Carlo variants of approximate…
The Poisson model is frequently employed to describe count data, but in a Bayesian context it leads to an analytically intractable posterior probability distribution. In this work, we analyze a variational Gaussian approximation to the…
I propose a variational approach to maximum pseudolikelihood inference of the Ising model. The variational algorithm is more computationally efficient, and does a better job predicting out-of-sample correlations than $L_2$ regularized…
We empirically evaluate a stochastic annealing strategy for Bayesian posterior optimization with variational inference. Variational inference is a deterministic approach to approximate posterior inference in Bayesian models in which a…
Bayesian inference typically relies on specifying a parametric model that approximates the data-generating process. However, misspecified models can yield poor convergence rates and unreliable posterior calibration. Bayesian empirical…
We consider the asymptotic behavior of posterior distributions if the model is misspecified. Given a prior distribution and a random sample from a distribution $P_0$, which may not be in the support of the prior, we show that the posterior…
Variational Bayes (VB) is a scalable alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) for Bayesian posterior inference. Though popular, VB comes with few theoretical guarantees, most of which focus on well-specified models. However, models…