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Related papers: Prior knowledge elicitation: The past, present, an…

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Bayesian optimization (BO) has become a popular strategy for global optimization of many expensive real-world functions. Contrary to a common belief that BO is suited to optimizing black-box functions, it actually requires domain knowledge…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-08 Zi Wang , George E. Dahl , Kevin Swersky , Chansoo Lee , Zelda Mariet , Zachary Nado , Justin Gilmer , Jasper Snoek , Zoubin Ghahramani

We propose an expert-elicitation method for learning non-parametric joint prior distributions using normalizing flows. Normalizing flows are a class of generative models that enable exact, single-step density evaluation and can capture…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-04-22 Florence Bockting , Stefan T. Radev , Paul-Christian Bürkner

The aim of this work is to study the problem of prior elicitation for the Mallows model with Spearman's distance, a popular distance-based model for rankings or permutation data. Previous Bayesian inference for such model has been limited…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-01-31 Marta Crispino , Isadora Antoniano-Villalobos

Large language models (LLMs) acquire a breadth of information across various domains. However, their computational complexity, cost, and lack of transparency often hinder their direct application for predictive tasks where privacy and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-29 Alexander Capstick , Rahul G. Krishnan , Payam Barnaghi

Bayesian inference allows the transparent communication of uncertainty in material flow analyses (MFAs), and a systematic update of uncertainty as new data become available. However, the method is undermined by the difficultly of defining…

Applications · Statistics 2024-03-28 Jiayuan Dong , Jiankan Liao , Xun Huan , Daniel Cooper

Some machine learning applications require continual learning - where data comes in a sequence of datasets, each is used for training and then permanently discarded. From a Bayesian perspective, continual learning seems straightforward:…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-02-19 Sebastian Farquhar , Yarin Gal

Advancements in computational power and methodologies have enabled research on massive datasets. However, tools for analyzing data with directional or periodic characteristics, such as wind directions and customers' arrival time in 24-hour…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-07 Xiang Ye , Janet Van Niekerk , Håvard Rue

Using instruments comprising ordered responses to items are ubiquitous for studying many constructs of interest. However, using such an item response format may lead to items with response categories infrequently endorsed or unendorsed…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-05-02 R. Noah Padgett , Grant B. Morgan , Tim Lomas

People naturally bring their prior beliefs to bear on how they interpret the new information, yet few formal models exist for accounting for the influence of users' prior beliefs in interactions with data presentations like visualizations.…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2019-01-11 Yea-Seul Kim , Logan A Walls , Peter Krafft , Jessica Hullman

The design of an experiment can be always be considered at least implicitly Bayesian, with prior knowledge used informally to aid decisions such as the variables to be studied and the choice of a plausible relationship between the…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-01-03 David C. Woods , Antony M. Overstall , Maria Adamou , Timothy W. Waite

We consider the specification of prior distributions for Bayesian model comparison, focusing on regression-type models. We propose a particular joint specification of the prior distribution across models so that sensitivity of posterior…

Methodology · Statistics 2012-07-25 Petros Dellaportas , Jonathan J. Forster , Ioannis Ntzoufras

Large language models (LLMs) have been extensively studied for their abilities to generate convincing natural language sequences, however their utility for quantitative information retrieval is less well understood. Here we explore the…

Bayesian data analysis is about more than just computing a posterior distribution, and Bayesian visualization is about more than trace plots of Markov chains. Practical Bayesian data analysis, like all data analysis, is an iterative process…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-01-31 Jonah Gabry , Daniel Simpson , Aki Vehtari , Michael Betancourt , Andrew Gelman

In this paper the problem of learning appropriate bias for an environment of related tasks is examined from a Bayesian perspective. The environment of related tasks is shown to be naturally modelled by the concept of an {\em objective}…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-15 Jonathan Baxter

We propose Posterior Bootstrap, a set of algorithms extending Weighted Likelihood Bootstrap, to properly incorporate prior information and address the problem of model misspecification in Bayesian inference. We consider two approaches to…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-04-19 Emilia Pompe

We explore probability modelling of discretization uncertainty for system states defined implicitly by ordinary or partial differential equations. Accounting for this uncertainty can avoid posterior under-coverage when likelihoods are…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-10-25 Oksana A. Chkrebtii , David A. Campbell , Ben Calderhead , Mark A. Girolami

Given a learning problem with real-world tradeoffs, which cost function should the model be trained to optimize? This is the metric selection problem in machine learning. Despite its practical interest, there is limited formal guidance on…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-08-22 Gaurush Hiranandani

Nowadays model uncertainty has become one of the most important problems in both academia and industry. In this paper, we mainly consider the scenario in which we have a common model set used for model averaging instead of selecting a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-26 Yimin Huang , Weiran Huang , Liang Li , Zhenguo Li

A significant barrier to the widespread adoption of Bayesian inference is the specification of prior distributions and likelihoods, which often requires specialized statistical expertise. This paper investigates the feasibility of using a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-08-13 Yongchao Huang

Stability selection is a versatile framework for structure estimation and variable selection in high-dimensional setting, primarily grounded in frequentist principles. In this paper, we propose an enhanced methodology that integrates…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-05 Mahdi Nouraie , Connor Smith , Samuel Muller