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Along with Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, variational inference (VI) has emerged as a central computational approach to large-scale Bayesian inference. Rather than sampling from the true posterior $\pi$, VI aims at producing a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-04-24 Marc Lambert , Sinho Chewi , Francis Bach , Silvère Bonnabel , Philippe Rigollet

We cast motion planning under uncertainty as a stochastic optimal control problem, where the optimal posterior distribution has an explicit form. To approximate this posterior, this work frames an optimization problem in the space of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-01-06 Zinuo Chang , Hongzhe Yu , Patricio Vela , Yongxin Chen

The main challenge in Bayesian models is to determine the posterior for the model parameters. Already, in models with only one or few parameters, the analytical posterior can only be determined in special settings. In Bayesian neural…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-06-02 Sefan Hörtling , Daniel Dold , Oliver Dürr , Beate Sick

Sampling and Variational Inference (VI) are two large families of methods for approximate inference that have complementary strengths. Sampling methods excel at approximating arbitrary probability distributions, but can be inefficient. VI…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-07 Richard D. Lange , Ari Benjamin , Ralf M. Haefner , Xaq Pitkow

A conventional Bayesian approach to prediction uses the posterior distribution to integrate out parameters in a density for unobserved data conditional on the observed data and parameters. When the true posterior is intractable, it is…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-27 Lucas Kock , Scott A. Sisson , G. S. Rodrigues , David J. Nott

We describe a variational approximation method for efficient inference in large-scale probabilistic models. Variational methods are deterministic procedures that provide approximations to marginal and conditional probabilities of interest.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2011-05-30 T. S. Jaakkola , M. I. Jordan

Gaussian processes (GPs) are nonparametric priors over functions. Fitting a GP implies computing a posterior distribution of functions consistent with the observed data. Similarly, deep Gaussian processes (DGPs) should allow us to compute a…

Blind image restoration (IR) is a common yet challenging problem in computer vision. Classical model-based methods and recent deep learning (DL)-based methods represent two different methodologies for this problem, each with their own…

Image and Video Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-05-02 Zongsheng Yue , Hongwei Yong , Qian Zhao , Lei Zhang , Deyu Meng , Kwan-Yee K. Wong

We propose a novel modular inference approach combining two different generative models -- generative adversarial networks (GAN) and normalizing flows -- to approximate the posterior distribution of physics-based Bayesian inverse problems…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2023-10-10 Agnimitra Dasgupta , Dhruv V Patel , Deep Ray , Erik A Johnson , Assad A Oberai

Variational inference (VI) is a specific type of approximate Bayesian inference that approximates an intractable posterior distribution with a tractable one. VI casts the inference problem as an optimization problem, more specifically, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-20 Felix Leibfried

Envelope models provide a sufficient dimension reduction framework for multivariate regression analysis. Bayesian inference for these models has been developed primarily using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. Specifically, Gibbs…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-03 Seunghyeon Kim , Kwangmin Lee , Yeonhee Park

The Bayesian approach to solving inverse problems relies on the choice of a prior. This critical ingredient allows the formulation of expert knowledge or physical constraints in a probabilistic fashion and plays an important role for the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-11-08 Manuel Marschall , Gerd Wübbeler , Franko Schmähling , Clemens Elster

Many scientific investigations require that the values of a set of model parameters are estimated using recorded data. In Bayesian inference, information from both observed data and prior knowledge is combined to update model parameters…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-09-17 Xuebin Zhao , Andrew Curtis

The choice of approximate posterior distribution is one of the core problems in variational inference. Most applications of variational inference employ simple families of posterior approximations in order to allow for efficient inference,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-06-15 Danilo Jimenez Rezende , Shakir Mohamed

Bayesian approach, as a useful tool for quantifying uncertainties, has been widely used for solving inverse problems of partial differential equations (PDEs). One of the key difficulties for employing Bayesian approach for the issue is how…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-02-09 Junxiong Jia , Qian Zhao , Zongben Xu , Deyu Meng , Yee Leung

Each training step for a variational autoencoder (VAE) requires us to sample from the approximate posterior, so we usually choose simple (e.g. factorised) approximate posteriors in which sampling is an efficient computation that fully…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-05-29 Laurence Aitchison , Vincent Adam , Srinivas C. Turaga

Posterior distributions arising in ill-posed Bayesian inverse problems are often both analytically intractable and highly sensitive to parameters of the chosen prior family. We aim to understand the sensitivity of intractable posterior…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-20 Yucong Liu , Zilai Si , Alexander Strang

Logistic regression involving high-dimensional covariates is a practically important problem. Often the goal is variable selection, i.e., determining which few of the many covariates are associated with the binary response. Unfortunately,…

Computation · Statistics 2025-02-18 Yiqi Tang , Ryan Martin

Bayesian methods have proved powerful in many applications for the inference of model parameters from data. These methods are based on Bayes' theorem, which itself is deceptively simple. However, in practice the computations required are…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-07-10 Michael A. Chappell , Mark W. Woolrich

This paper considers parameter estimation for nonlinear state-space models, which is an important but challenging problem. We address this challenge by employing a variational inference (VI) approach, which is a principled method that has…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-09-15 Jarrad Courts , Adrian Wills , Thomas Schön , Brett Ninness