English
Related papers

Related papers: Approximate Inference for Stochastic Planning in F…

200 papers

Simulation-based inference (SBI) is transforming experimental sciences by enabling parameter estimation in complex non-linear models from simulated data. A persistent challenge, however, is model misspecification: simulators are only…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-20 Pierre-Louis Ruhlmann , Pedro L. C. Rodrigues , Michael Arbel , Florence Forbes

Stochastic variational inference for collapsed models has recently been successfully applied to large scale topic modelling. In this paper, we propose a stochastic collapsed variational inference algorithm in the sequential data setting.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-12-08 Pengyu Wang , Phil Blunsom

We present new algorithms and fast implementations to find efficient approximations for modelling stochastic processes. For many numerical computations it is essential to develop finite approximations for stochastic processes. While the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-12-03 Kipngeno Benard Kirui , Georg Ch. Pflug , Alois Pichler

Several recent works have explored stochastic gradient methods for variational inference that exploit the geometry of the variational-parameter space. However, the theoretical properties of these methods are not well-understood and these…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-08-15 Mohammad Emtiyaz Khan , Reza Babanezhad , Wu Lin , Mark Schmidt , Masashi Sugiyama

Bayesian inference allows expressing the uncertainty of posterior belief under a probabilistic model given prior information and the likelihood of the evidence. Predominantly, the likelihood function is only implicitly established by a…

In variational inference, the benefits of Bayesian models rely on accurately capturing the true posterior distribution. We propose using neural samplers that specify implicit distributions, which are well-suited for approximating complex…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-10 Anshuk Uppal , Kristoffer Stensbo-Smidt , Wouter Boomsma , Jes Frellsen

Stochastic approximation algorithm is a useful technique which has been exploited successfully in probability theory and statistics for a long time. The step sizes used in stochastic approximation are generally taken to be deterministic and…

Probability · Mathematics 2019-09-25 Ujan Gangopadhyay , Krishanu Maulik

For complex simulation problems, inferring parameters often precludes the use of classical likelihood-based techniques due to intractable likelihoods. Simulation-based inference (SBI) methods offer a likelihood-free approach to directly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-16 Haley Rosso , Talea Mayo

Variational inference (VI) is widely used for approximate inference in Bayesian machine learning. In addition to this practical success, generalization bounds for variational inference and related algorithms have been developed, mostly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-19 Yadi Wei , Roni Khardon

We study optimization algorithms for the finite sum problems frequently arising in machine learning applications. First, we propose novel variants of stochastic gradient descent with a variance reduction property that enables linear…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-07-06 Jakub Konečný

Statistical estimation often involves tradeoffs between expensive, high-quality measurements and a variety of lower-quality proxies. We introduce Multiple-Prediction-Powered Inference (MultiPPI): a general framework for constructing…

Variational inference is a scalable technique for approximate Bayesian inference. Deriving variational inference algorithms requires tedious model-specific calculations; this makes it difficult to automate. We propose an automatic…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-06-15 Alp Kucukelbir , Rajesh Ranganath , Andrew Gelman , David M. Blei

When a statistical model $\{P_{\theta} : \theta \in \Theta\}$ lacks analytically tractable likelihoods, parametric statistical inference based on data generated from an unknown underlying distribution $P$ can still be performed as long as…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-19 Peter Matthew Jacobs , Lekha Patel , Anirban Bhattacharya , Debdeep Pati

Stochastic convex optimization, where the objective is the expectation of a random convex function, is an important and widely used method with numerous applications in machine learning, statistics, operations research and other areas. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-11-23 Vitaly Feldman , Cristobal Guzman , Santosh Vempala

Variational Optimization forms a differentiable upper bound on an objective. We show that approaches such as Natural Evolution Strategies and Gaussian Perturbation, are special cases of Variational Optimization in which the expectations are…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-09-14 Thomas Bird , Julius Kunze , David Barber

To infer a function value on a specific point $x$, it is essential to assign higher weights to the points closer to $x$, which is called local polynomial / multivariable regression. In many practical cases, a limited sample size may ruin…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-09-30 Yanwu Gu , Dong Xia

Probabilistic programming provides the means to represent and reason about complex probabilistic models using programming language constructs. Even simple probabilistic programs can produce models with infinitely many variables. Factored…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2015-09-14 Avi Pfeffer , Brian Ruttenberg , Amy Sliva , Michael Howard , Glenn Takata

Simulation-based inference (SBI) is a method to perform inference on a variety of complex scientific models with challenging inference (inverse) problems. Bayesian Optimal Experimental Design (BOED) aims to efficiently use experimental…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-13 Vincent D. Zaballa , Elliot E. Hui

Black-box variational inference (BBVI) now sees widespread use in machine learning and statistics as a fast yet flexible alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for approximate Bayesian inference. However, stochastic optimization…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-09-22 Manushi Welandawe , Michael Riis Andersen , Aki Vehtari , Jonathan H. Huggins

Two-stage stochastic optimization is a framework for modeling uncertainty, where we have a probability distribution over possible realizations of the data, called scenarios, and decisions are taken in two stages: we make first-stage…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-10-25 Andre Linhares , Chaitanya Swamy