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Bayesian quantum estimation provides a robust framework for quantum technologies, especially in scenarios with limited data and minimal prior information. Yet, its application to continuous-variable Gaussian systems has remained limited and…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-19 Edward Gandar , Jesús Rubio

We develop a general optimization-theoretic framework for Bregman-Variational Learning Dynamics (BVLD), a new class of operator-based updates that unify Bayesian inference, mirror descent, and proximal learning under time-varying…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-24 Jinho Cha , Youngchul Kim , Jungmin Shin , Jaeyoung Cho , Seon Jin Kim , Junyeol Ryu

Current approaches in approximate inference for Bayesian neural networks minimise the Kullback-Leibler divergence to approximate the true posterior over the weights. However, this approximation is without knowledge of the final application,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-05-11 Adam D. Cobb , Stephen J. Roberts , Yarin Gal

We prove that black-box variational inference (BBVI) with control variates, particularly the sticking-the-landing (STL) estimator, converges at a geometric (traditionally called "linear") rate under perfect variational family specification.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-14 Kyurae Kim , Yian Ma , Jacob R. Gardner

Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) represent a promising approach to utilizing current quantum computing infrastructures. VQAs are based on a parameterized quantum circuit optimized in a closed loop via a classical algorithm. This hybrid…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-04-10 David Fitzek , Robert S. Jonsson , Werner Dobrautz , Christian Schäfer

We introduce a variational Bayesian neural network where the parameters are governed via a probability distribution on random matrices. Specifically, we employ a matrix variate Gaussian \cite{gupta1999matrix} parameter posterior…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-06-24 Christos Louizos , Max Welling

The core principle of Variational Inference (VI) is to convert the statistical inference problem of computing complex posterior probability densities into a tractable optimization problem. This property enables VI to be faster than several…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-25 Ankush Ganguly , Sanjana Jain , Ukrit Watchareeruetai

Semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI) extends traditional variational families with semi-implicit distributions defined in a hierarchical manner. Due to the intractable densities of semi-implicit distributions, classical SIVI often…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-30 Ziheng Cheng , Longlin Yu , Tianyu Xie , Shiyue Zhang , Cheng Zhang

Semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI) enriches the expressiveness of variational families by utilizing a kernel and a mixing distribution to hierarchically define the variational distribution. Existing SIVI methods parameterize the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-01-16 Jen Ning Lim , Adam M. Johansen

We advocate an optimization-centric view on and introduce a novel generalization of Bayesian inference. Our inspiration is the representation of Bayes' rule as infinite-dimensional optimization problem (Csiszar, 1975; Donsker and Varadhan;…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-12-13 Jeremias Knoblauch , Jack Jewson , Theodoros Damoulas

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

In this paper, we study the trade-offs of different inference approaches for Bayesian matrix factorisation methods, which are commonly used for predicting missing values, and for finding patterns in the data. In particular, we consider…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-07-18 Thomas Brouwer , Jes Frellsen , Pietro Lió

In this paper, we study efficient approximate sampling for probability distributions known up to normalization constants. We specifically focus on a problem class arising in Bayesian inference for large-scale inverse problems in science and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-14 Yifan Chen , Daniel Zhengyu Huang , Jiaoyang Huang , Sebastian Reich , Andrew M. Stuart

In the Bayesian approach to inverse problems, data are often informative, relative to the prior, only on a low-dimensional subspace of the parameter space. Significant computational savings can be achieved by using this subspace to…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2015-07-07 Alessio Spantini , Antti Solonen , Tiangang Cui , James Martin , Luis Tenorio , Youssef Marzouk

This paper studies the problem of approximately unlearning a Bayesian model from a small subset of the training data to be erased. We frame this problem as one of minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the approximate posterior…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-27 Quoc Phong Nguyen , Bryan Kian Hsiang Low , Patrick Jaillet

Many real-world tasks require optimizing expensive black-box functions accessible only through noisy evaluations, a setting commonly addressed with Bayesian optimization (BO). While Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) have recently emerged as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-14 Farhad Mirkarimi

Bayesian decision theory provides an elegant framework for acting optimally under uncertainty when tractable posterior distributions are available. Modern Bayesian models, however, typically involve intractable posteriors that are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-15 Meet P. Vadera , Soumya Ghosh , Kenney Ng , Benjamin M. Marlin

Deep feedforward neural networks (DFNNs) are a powerful tool for functional approximation. We describe flexible versions of generalized linear and generalized linear mixed models incorporating basis functions formed by a DFNN. The…

Computation · Statistics 2018-05-28 Minh-Ngoc Tran , Nghia Nguyen , David Nott , Robert Kohn

Neural networks make accurate predictions but often fail to provide reliable uncertainty estimates, especially under covariate distribution shifts between training and testing. To address this problem, we propose a Bayesian framework for…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-12-22 Yuli Slavutsky , David M. Blei

We develop unbiased implicit variational inference (UIVI), a method that expands the applicability of variational inference by defining an expressive variational family. UIVI considers an implicit variational distribution obtained in a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-02-07 Michalis K. Titsias , Francisco J. R. Ruiz