Related papers: On the Convergence of Coordinate Ascent Variationa…

Variational Inference (VI) is a popular alternative to asymptotically exact sampling in Bayesian inference. Its main workhorse is optimization over a reverse Kullback-Leibler divergence (RKL), which typically underestimates the tail of the…

In this paper, we propose CI-VI an efficient and scalable solver for semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI). Our method, first, maps SIVI's evidence lower bound (ELBO) to a form involving a nonlinear functional nesting of expected…

Variational inference (VI) seeks to approximate a target distribution $\pi$ by an element of a tractable family of distributions. Of key interest in statistics and machine learning is Gaussian VI, which approximates $\pi$ by minimizing the…

Stochastic gradient Markov Chain Monte Carlo (SGMCMC) is considered the gold standard for Bayesian inference in large-scale models, such as Bayesian neural networks. Since practitioners face speed versus accuracy tradeoffs in these models,…

We provide the first convergence guarantee for full black-box variational inference (BBVI), also known as Monte Carlo variational inference. While preliminary investigations worked on simplified versions of BBVI (e.g., bounded domain,…

Variational Bayes (VB) inference is one of the most important algorithms in machine learning and widely used in engineering and industry. However, VB is known to suffer from the problem of local optima. In this Letter, we generalize VB by…

We develop an interior-point approach to solve constrained variational inequality (cVI) problems. Inspired by the efficacy of the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) method in the single-objective context, we generalize ADMM…

In this paper we study variational inequalities (VI) defined by the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) of uncertain functions. We introduce stochastic approximation schemes that employ an empirical estimate of the CVaR at each iteration to…

Variational Bayes (VB) inference algorithm is used widely to estimate both the parameters and the unobserved hidden variables in generative statistical models. The algorithm -- inspired by variational methods used in computational physics…

Recent advances in stochastic gradient variational inference have made it possible to perform variational Bayesian inference with posterior approximations containing auxiliary random variables. This enables us to explore a new synthesis of…

We highlight a striking difference in behavior between two widely used variants of coordinate ascent variational inference: the sequential and parallel algorithms. While such differences were known in the numerical analysis literature in…

The main computational challenge in Bayesian inference is to compute integrals against a high-dimensional posterior distribution. In the past decades, variational inference (VI) has emerged as a tractable approximation to these integrals,…

To obtain uncertainty estimates with real-world Bayesian deep learning models, practical inference approximations are needed. Dropout variational inference (VI) for example has been used for machine vision and medical applications, but VI…

In this paper, we address the problem of convergence of sequential variational inference filter (VIF) through the application of a robust variational objective and Hinf-norm based correction for a linear Gaussian system. As the dimension of…

Approximate inference in high-dimensional, discrete probabilistic models is a central problem in computational statistics and machine learning. This paper describes discrete particle variational inference (DPVI), a new approach that…

This paper describes an approach to simultaneously identify clusters and estimate cluster-specific regression parameters from the given data. Such an approach can be useful in learning the relationship between input and output when the…

Semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI) enhances the expressiveness of variational families through hierarchical semi-implicit distributions, but the intractability of their densities makes standard ELBO-based optimization biased. Recent…

Balancing computational efficiency with robust predictive performance is crucial in supervised learning, especially for critical applications. Standard deep learning models, while accurate and scalable, often lack probabilistic features…

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…

Variational Inference (VI) is an attractive alternative to Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) due to its computational efficiency in the case of large datasets and/or complex models with high-dimensional parameters. However, evaluating the…