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Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is a set of techniques for Bayesian inference when the likelihood is intractable but sampling from the model is possible. This work presents a simple yet effective ABC algorithm based on the…

Computation · Statistics 2019-03-01 Yanzhi Chen , Michael U. Gutmann

Collected data, which is used for analysis or prediction tasks, often have a hierarchical structure, for example, data from various people performing the same task. Modeling the data's structure can improve the reliability of the derived…

Applications · Statistics 2018-11-12 Dennis Becker

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

Approximate inference methods like the Laplace method, Laplace approximations and variational methods, amongst others, are popular methods when exact inference is not feasible due to the complexity of the model or the abundance of data. In…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-10-02 Janet van Niekerk , Haavard Rue

Bayesian models are a powerful tool for studying complex data, allowing the analyst to encode rich hierarchical dependencies and leverage prior information. Most importantly, they facilitate a complete characterization of uncertainty…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-04-25 Steven Winter , Trevor Campbell , Lizhen Lin , Sanvesh Srivastava , David B. Dunson

We propose a general algorithm for approximating nonstandard Bayesian posterior distributions. The algorithm minimizes the Kullback-Leibler divergence of an approximating distribution to the intractable posterior distribution. Our method…

Computation · Statistics 2014-07-29 Tim Salimans , David A. Knowles

Bayesian inference provides principled uncertainty quantification, but accurate posterior sampling with MCMC can be computationally prohibitive for modern applications. Variational inference (VI) offers a scalable alternative and often…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-14 Laura Battaglia , Stefano Cortinovis , Chris Holmes , David T. Frazier , Jack Jewson

We propose a new method for conducting Bayesian prediction that delivers accurate predictions without correctly specifying the unknown true data generating process. A prior is defined over a class of plausible predictive models. After…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-08-24 Ruben Loaiza-Maya , Gael M. Martin , David T. Frazier

While Bayesian methods are extremely popular in statistics and machine learning, their application to massive datasets is often challenging, when possible at all. Indeed, the classical MCMC algorithms are prohibitively slow when both the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-04-23 Pierre Alquier , James Ridgway

A framework to boost the efficiency of Bayesian inference in probabilistic programs is introduced by embedding a sampler inside a variational posterior approximation. We call it the refined variational approximation. Its strength lies both…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-25 Victor Gallego , David Rios Insua

Mean Field Variational Bayes (MFVB) is a popular posterior approximation method due to its fast runtime on large-scale data sets. However, it is well known that a major failing of MFVB is its (sometimes severe) underestimates of the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2014-12-10 Ryan Giordano , Tamara Broderick

Variational Bayes (VB) is a popular and computationally efficient method to approximate the posterior distribution in Bayesian inference, especially when the exact posterior is analytically intractable and sampling-based approaches are…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-12-30 Jiaming Liu , Meng Li

Bayesian inference affords scientists with powerful tools for testing hypotheses. One of these tools is the Bayes factor, which indexes the extent to which support for one hypothesis over another is updated after seeing the data. Part of…

Computation · Statistics 2018-12-11 Thomas J. Faulkenberry

Gaussian empirical Bayes methods usually maintain a precision independence assumption: The unknown parameters of interest are independent from the known standard errors of the estimates. This assumption is often theoretically questionable…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-12-30 Jiafeng Chen

We derive and present explicit algorithms to facilitate streamlined computing for variational inference for models containing higher level random effects. Existing literature, such as Lee and Wand (2016), is such that streamlined…

Computation · Statistics 2020-07-07 Tui H. Nolan , Marianne Menictas , Matt P. Wand

We propose a fast and theoretically grounded method for Bayesian variable selection and model averaging in latent variable regression models. Our framework addresses three interrelated challenges: (i) intractable marginal likelihoods, (ii)…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-09-16 Gregor Zens , Mark F. J. Steel

Estimation and prediction in high dimensional multivariate factor stochastic volatility models is an important and active research area because such models allow a parsimonious representation of multivariate stochastic volatility. Bayesian…

Computation · Statistics 2021-04-27 David Gunawan , Robert Kohn , David Nott

Vanilla variational inference finds an optimal approximation to the Bayesian posterior distribution, but even the exact Bayesian posterior is often not meaningful under model misspecification. We propose predictive variational inference…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-31 Jinlin Lai , Antonio Linero , Yuling Yao

Variational Bayesian Inference is a popular methodology for approximating posterior distributions over Bayesian neural network weights. Recent work developing this class of methods has explored ever richer parameterizations of the…

Bayes linear analysis and approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) are techniques commonly used in the Bayesian analysis of complex models. In this article we connect these ideas by demonstrating that regression-adjustment ABC algorithms…

Methodology · Statistics 2012-12-10 D. J. Nott , Y. Fan , L. Marshall , S. A. Sisson