Related papers: Kernel Stein Discrepancy thinning: a theoretical p…
Polynomial kernel regression is one of the standard and state-of-the-art learning strategies. However, as is well known, the choices of the degree of polynomial kernel and the regularization parameter are still open in the realm of model…
We introduce a new family of particle evolution samplers suitable for constrained domains and non-Euclidean geometries. Stein Variational Mirror Descent and Mirrored Stein Variational Gradient Descent minimize the Kullback-Leibler (KL)…
The Wasserstein distance is a powerful metric based on the theory of optimal transport. It gives a natural measure of the distance between two distributions with a wide range of applications. In contrast to a number of the common…
This paper introduces a framework for speeding up Bayesian inference conducted in presence of large datasets. We design a Markov chain whose transition kernel uses an (unknown) fraction of (fixed size) of the available data that is randomly…
We study the Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) algorithm, which optimises a set of particles to approximate a target probability distribution $\pi\propto e^{-V}$ on $\mathbb{R}^d$. In the population limit, SVGD performs gradient…
We present a sequential version of the kernelized Stein discrepancy goodness-of-fit test, which allows for conducting goodness-of-fit tests for unnormalized densities that are continuously monitored and adaptively stopped. That is, the…
Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a non-parametric inference algorithm that evolves a set of particles to fit a given distribution of interest. We analyze the non-asymptotic properties of SVGD, showing that there exists a set of…
We present a new particle filtering algorithm for nonlinear systems in the discrete-time setting. Our algorithm is based on the Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) framework, which is a general approach to sample from a target…
This paper presents an algorithm, Voted Kernel Regularization , that provides the flexibility of using potentially very complex kernel functions such as predictors based on much higher-degree polynomial kernels, while benefitting from…
We propose a new class of learning algorithms that combines variational approximation and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation. Naive algorithms that use the variational approximation as proposal distribution can perform poorly…
The basic question in perturbation analysis of Markov chains is: how do small changes in the transition kernels of Markov chains translate to chains in their stationary distributions? Many papers on the subject have shown, roughly, that the…
Kernel ridge regression, KRR, is a generalization of linear ridge regression that is non-linear in the data, but linear in the model parameters. Here, we introduce an equivalent formulation of the objective function of KRR, which opens up…
Gradient estimation -- approximating the gradient of an expectation with respect to the parameters of a distribution -- is central to the solution of many machine learning problems. However, when the distribution is discrete, most common…
Kernel techniques are among the most popular and flexible approaches in data science allowing to represent probability measures without loss of information under mild conditions. The resulting mapping called mean embedding gives rise to a…
There is a lack of simple and scalable algorithms for uncertainty quantification. Bayesian methods quantify uncertainty through posterior and predictive distributions, but it is difficult to rapidly estimate summaries of these…
Stein's method for measuring convergence to a continuous target distribution relies on an operator characterizing the target and Stein factor bounds on the solutions of an associated differential equation. While such operators and bounds…
When using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms to perform inference for Bayesian clustering models, such as mixture models, the output is typically a sample of clusterings (partitions) drawn from the posterior distribution. In…
Generalised Bayesian inference updates prior beliefs using a loss function, rather than a likelihood, and can therefore be used to confer robustness against possible mis-specification of the likelihood. Here we consider generalised Bayesian…
Computing smoothing distributions, the distributions of one or more states conditional on past, present, and future observations is a recurring problem when operating on general hidden Markov models. The aim of this paper is to provide a…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are widely used in machine learning. One of the major problems with MCMC is the question of how to design chains that mix fast over the whole state space; in particular, how to select the parameters…