Related papers: On the Convergence of Coordinate Ascent Variationa…

We present a methodology for model evaluation and selection where the sampling mechanism violates the i.i.d. assumption. Our methodology involves a formulation of the bias between the standard Cross-Validation (CV) estimator and the mean…

Variational inference (VI) combined with data subsampling enables approximate posterior inference over large data sets, but suffers from poor local optima. We first formulate a deterministic annealing approach for the generic class of…

In this paper, we consider a Bayesian bi-level variable selection problem in high-dimensional regressions. In many practical situations, it is natural to assign group membership to each predictor. Examples include that genetic variants can…

We conduct non-asymptotic analysis on the mean-field variational inference for approximating posterior distributions in complex Bayesian models that may involve latent variables. We show that the mean-field approximation to the posterior…

Boosting variational inference (BVI) approximates an intractable probability density by iteratively building up a mixture of simple component distributions one at a time, using techniques from sparse convex optimization to provide both…

We review recently proposed Bayesian approaches for clustering high-dimensional data. After identifying the main limitations of available approaches, we introduce an alternative framework based on vertical consensus inference (VCI) to…

Stein variational inference (SVI) is a sample-based approximate Bayesian inference technique that generates a sample set by jointly optimizing the samples' locations to minimize an information-theoretic measure of discrepancy with the…

Stochastic natural gradient variational inference (NGVI) is a popular and efficient algorithm for Bayesian inference. Despite empirical success, the convergence of this method is still not fully understood. In this work, we define and study…

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of variational inference in latent variable models for survival analysis, emphasizing the distinctive challenges associated with applying variational methods to survival data. We identify a…

Reconstructing the evolutionary history relating a collection of molecular sequences is the main subject of modern Bayesian phylogenetic inference. However, the commonly used Markov chain Monte Carlo methods can be inefficient due to the…

Many probabilistic models of interest in scientific computing and machine learning have expensive, black-box likelihoods that prevent the application of standard techniques for Bayesian inference, such as MCMC, which would require access to…

We propose a variational Bayesian (VB) procedure for high-dimensional linear model inferences with heavy tail shrinkage priors, such as student-t prior. Theoretically, we establish the consistency of the proposed VB method and prove that…

Variational inference is a powerful approach for approximate posterior inference. However, it is sensitive to initialization and can be subject to poor local optima. In this paper, we develop proximity variational inference (PVI). PVI is a…

Amortized variational inference is an often employed framework in simulation-based inference that produces a posterior approximation that can be rapidly computed given any new observation. Unfortunately, there are few guarantees about the…

While deep learning has expanded the possibilities for highly expressive variational families, the practical benefits of these tools for variational inference (VI) are often limited by the minimization of the traditional Kullback-Leibler…

This paper introduces a new extragradient-type algorithm for a class of nonconvex-nonconcave minimax problems. It is well-known that finding a local solution for general minimax problems is computationally intractable. This observation has…

Large spatial datasets with non-Gaussian responses are increasingly common in environmental monitoring, ecology, and remote sensing, yet scalable Bayesian inference for such data remains challenging. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods…

Given an intractable target density $p$, variational inference (VI) attempts to find the best approximation $q$ from a tractable family $Q$. This is typically done by minimizing the exclusive Kullback-Leibler divergence, $\text{KL}(q||p)$.…

The stochastic variational inference (SVI) paradigm, which combines variational inference, natural gradients, and stochastic updates, was recently proposed for large-scale data analysis in conjugate Bayesian models and demonstrated to be…

The steady-state Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) makes it possible to incorporate prior information about the long-run mean of the process. This has been shown in many studies to substantially improve forecasting performance, and the…