Related papers: Provable convergence guarantees for black-box vari…
Motivated by the problem of tuning hyperparameters in machine learning, we present a new approach for gradually and adaptively optimizing an unknown function using estimated gradients. We validate the empirical performance of the proposed…
Building models that comply with the invariances inherent to different domains, such as invariance under translation or rotation, is a key aspect of applying machine learning to real world problems like molecular property prediction,…
Understanding how different classes are distributed in an unlabeled data set is an important challenge for the calibration of probabilistic classifiers and uncertainty quantification. Approaches like adjusted classify and count, black-box…
Latent variable time-series models are among the most heavily used tools from machine learning and applied statistics. These models have the advantage of learning latent structure both from noisy observations and from the temporal ordering…
The reparameterization trick is widely used in variational inference as it yields more accurate estimates of the gradient of the variational objective than alternative approaches such as the score function method. Although there is…
Derivative Free Optimization is known to be an efficient and robust method to tackle the black-box optimization problem. When it comes to noisy functions, classical comparison-based algorithms are slower than gradient-based algorithms. For…
Recent advances in coreset methods have shown that a selection of representative datapoints can replace massive volumes of data for Bayesian inference, preserving the relevant statistical information and significantly accelerating…
How can we perform efficient inference and learning in directed probabilistic models, in the presence of continuous latent variables with intractable posterior distributions, and large datasets? We introduce a stochastic variational…
Parameter inference for stochastic differential equations is challenging due to the presence of a latent diffusion process. Working with an Euler-Maruyama discretisation for the diffusion, we use variational inference to jointly learn the…
A broad class of hybrid quantum-classical algorithms known as "variational algorithms" have been proposed in the context of quantum simulation, machine learning, and combinatorial optimization as a means of potentially achieving a quantum…
Variational hybrid quantum-classical optimization represents one of the most promising avenue to show the advantage of nowadays noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers in solving hard problems, such as finding the minimum-energy state of…
We study the performance of estimators of a sparse nonrandom vector based on an observation which is linearly transformed and corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise. Using the reproducing kernel Hilbert space framework, we derive a new…
We propose a new framework for black-box convex optimization which is well-suited for situations where gradient computations are expensive. We derive a new method for this framework which leverages several concepts from convex optimization,…
We investigate the convergence properties of a class of iterative algorithms designed to minimize a potentially non-smooth and noisy objective function, which may be algebraically intractable and whose values may be obtained as the output…
We analyse the convergence of the proximal gradient algorithm for convex composite problems in the presence of gradient and proximal computational inaccuracies. We derive new tighter deterministic and probabilistic bounds that we use to…
Mirror Descent is a popular algorithm, that extends Gradients Descent (GD) beyond the Euclidean geometry. One of its benefits is to enable strong convergence guarantees through smooth-like analyses, even for objectives with exploding or…
This work introduces the StoMADS-PB algorithm for constrained stochastic blackbox optimization, which is an extension of the mesh adaptive direct-search (MADS) method originally developed for deterministic blackbox optimization under…
This paper provides a unifying theoretical framework for stochastic optimization algorithms by means of a latent stochastic variational problem. Using techniques from stochastic control, the solution to the variational problem is shown to…
Black box variational inference allows researchers to easily prototype and evaluate an array of models. Recent advances allow such algorithms to scale to high dimensions. However, a central question remains: How to specify an expressive…
As machine learning-based prediction systems are increasingly used in high-stakes situations, it is important to understand how such predictive models will perform upon deployment. Distribution-free uncertainty quantification techniques…