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Bayesian models quantify uncertainty and facilitate optimal decision-making in downstream applications. For most models, however, practitioners are forced to use approximate inference techniques that lead to sub-optimal decisions due to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-09-12 Tomasz Kuśmierczyk , Joseph Sakaya , Arto Klami

Bayesian methods have become a popular way to incorporate prior knowledge and a notion of uncertainty into machine learning models. At the same time, the complexity of modern machine learning makes it challenging to comprehend a model's…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-09 Sarem Seitz

Standard Bayesian analyses can be difficult to perform when the full likelihood, and consequently the full posterior distribution, is too complex and difficult to specify or if robustness with respect to data or to model misspecifications…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-01-08 Federica Giummolè , Valentina Mameli , Erlis Ruli , Laura Ventura

In Bayesian statistics, one's prior beliefs about underlying model parameters are revised with the information content of observed data from which, using Bayes' rule, a posterior belief is obtained. A non-trivial example taken from the…

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Physics 2007-05-23 J. Charles , A. Hocker , H. Lacker , F. R. Le Diberder , S. T'Jampens

Study of the bivariate normal distribution raises the full range of issues involving objective Bayesian inference, including the different types of objective priors (e.g., Jeffreys, invariant, reference, matching), the different modes of…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2008-12-18 James O. Berger , Dongchu Sun

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

In high-dimensional Bayesian statistics, various methods have been developed, including prior distributions that induce parameter sparsity to handle many parameters. Yet, these approaches often overlook the rich spectral structure of the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-05-06 Tomoya Wakayama , Masaaki Imaizumi

Bayesian model comparison requires the specification of a prior distribution on the parameter space of each candidate model. In this connection two concerns arise: on the one hand the elicitation task rapidly becomes prohibitive as the…

Methodology · Statistics 2011-02-16 Guido Consonni , Piero Veronese

Bayesian inference allows machine learning models to express uncertainty. Current machine learning models use only a single learnable parameter combination when making predictions, and as a result are highly overconfident when their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-23 Andrew Wood , Moshik Hershcovitch , Daniel Waddington , Sarel Cohen , Peter Chin

Bayesian posterior distributions are widely used for inference, but their dependence on a statistical model creates some challenges. In particular, there may be lots of nuisance parameters that require prior distributions and posterior…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-04-12 Nicholas Syring , Ryan Martin

There exist many forms of deep latent variable models, such as the variational autoencoder and adversarial autoencoder. Regardless of the specific class of model, there exists an implicit consensus that the latent distribution should be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-17 Rogan Morrow , Wei-Chen Chiu

We propose a Bayesian approach using improper priors for hierarchical linear mixed models with flexible random effects and residual error distributions. The error distribution is modelled using scale mixtures of normals, which can capture…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-02-06 F. J. Rubio , M. F. J. Steel

In computational inverse problems, it is common that a detailed and accurate forward model is approximated by a computationally less challenging substitute. The model reduction may be necessary to meet constraints in computing time when…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-02-14 Daniela Calvetti , Matthew M. Dunlop , Erkki Somersalo , Andrew M. Stuart

We propose a Bayesian inference framework to estimate uncertainties in inverse scattering problems. Given the observed data, the forward model and their uncertainties, we find the posterior distribution over a finite parameter field…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2020-11-17 Ana Carpio , Sergei Iakunin , Georg Stadler

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

In an indirect Gaussian sequence space model lower and upper bounds are derived for the concentration rate of the posterior distribution of the parameter of interest shrinking to the parameter value $\theta^\circ$ that generates the data.…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2015-02-03 Jan Johannes , Anna Simoni , Rudolf Schenk

Bayesian statistics has gained popularity in psychological research due to its intuitive uncertainty quantification and convenient information-updating rules. In many applications, however, prior distributions are introduced merely as…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-10 Yang Liu , Jonathan P. Williams , Jan Hannig

Observational astrophysics consists of making inferences about the Universe by comparing data and models. The credible intervals placed on model parameters are often as important as the maximum a posteriori probability values, as the…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2021-12-15 Will J. Percival , Oliver Friedrich , Elena Sellentin , Alan Heavens

The main object of Bayesian statistical inference is the determination of posterior distributions. Sometimes these laws are given for quantities devoid of empirical value. This serious drawback vanishes when one confines oneself to…

Statistical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2008-12-02 Federico Bassetti

Modeling uncertainty in deep neural networks, despite recent important advances, is still an open problem. Bayesian neural networks are a powerful solution, where the prior over network weights is a design choice, often a normal…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-10-29 Raanan Y. Rohekar , Yaniv Gurwicz , Shami Nisimov , Gal Novik