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Stochastic models with global parameters and latent variables are common, and for which variational inference (VI) is popular. However, existing methods are often either slow or inaccurate in high dimensions. We suggest a fast and accurate…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-07-26 Weiben Zhang , Michael Stanley Smith , Worapree Maneesoonthorn , Ruben Loaiza-Maya

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…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-04-13 Michael Diao , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Sinho Chewi , Adil Salim

While stochastic variational inference is relatively well known for scaling inference in Bayesian probabilistic models, related methods also offer ways to circumnavigate the approximation of analytically intractable expectations. The key…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-09-08 David A. Knowles

We refer to recent inference methodology and formulate a framework for solving the distributionally robust optimization problem, where the true probability measure is inside a Wasserstein ball around the empirical measure and the radius of…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2023-06-28 Xin Hai , Kihun Nam

Numerous infinite dimensional dynamical systems arising in different fields have been shown to exhibit a gradient flow structure in the Wasserstein space. We construct Two Point Flux Approximation Finite Volume schemes discretizing such…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2020-06-29 Andrea Natale , Gabriele Todeschi

Despite of its importance for safe machine learning, uncertainty quantification for neural networks is far from being solved. State-of-the-art approaches to estimate neural uncertainties are often hybrid, combining parametric models with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-03 Joachim Sicking , Maram Akila , Maximilian Pintz , Tim Wirtz , Asja Fischer , Stefan Wrobel

In this article, we introduce a new approach towards the statistical learning problem $\operatorname{argmin}_{\rho(\theta) \in \mathcal P_{\theta}} W_{Q}^2 (\rho_{\star},\rho(\theta))$ to approximate a target quantum state $\rho_{\star}$ by…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2021-02-03 Simon Becker , Wuchen Li

We show that the continuous-time gradient descent in Rn can be viewed as an optimal controlled evolution for a suitable action functional; a similar result holds for stochastic gradient descent. We then provide an analogous characterization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-03 Yongxin Chen , Tryphon Georgiou , Michele Pavon

We present a novel approximate inference method for diffusion processes, based on the Wasserstein gradient flow formulation of the diffusion. In this formulation, the time-dependent density of the diffusion is derived as the limit of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-06-13 Charlie Frogner , Tomaso Poggio

Wasserstein barycenters provide a geometrically meaningful way to aggregate probability distributions, built on the theory of optimal transport. They are difficult to compute in practice, however, leading previous work to restrict their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-27 Lingxiao Li , Aude Genevay , Mikhail Yurochkin , Justin Solomon

This paper presents a Wasserstein attraction approach for solving dynamic mass transport problems over networks. In the transport problem over networks, we start with a distribution over the set of nodes that needs to be "transported" to a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-04-28 Ferran Arqué , César A. Uribe , Carlos Ocampo-Martinez

Gradient-based optimization is the foundation of deep learning and reinforcement learning. Even when the mechanism being optimized is unknown or not differentiable, optimization using high-variance or biased gradient estimates is still…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-02-27 Will Grathwohl , Dami Choi , Yuhuai Wu , Geoffrey Roeder , David Duvenaud

This manuscript introduces a regression-type formulation for approximating the Perron-Frobenius Operator by relying on distributional snapshots of data. These snapshots may represent densities of particles. The Wasserstein metric is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-11-03 Amirhossein Karimi , Tryphon T. Georgiou

Variational inference (VI) has emerged as a popular method for approximate inference for high-dimensional Bayesian models. In this paper, we propose a novel VI method that extends the naive mean field via entropic regularization, referred…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-02 Bohan Wu , David Blei

There is extensive literature on accelerating first-order optimization methods in a Euclidean setting. Under which conditions such acceleration is feasible in Riemannian optimization problems is an active area of research. Motivated by the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-23 Jiyoung Park , Abhishek Roy , Jonathan W. Siegel , Anirban Bhattacharya

We consider stochastic programs where the distribution of the uncertain parameters is only observable through a finite training dataset. Using the Wasserstein metric, we construct a ball in the space of (multivariate and non-discrete)…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-06-14 Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani , Daniel Kuhn

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

This article details a novel numerical scheme to approximate gradient flows for optimal transport (i.e. Wasserstein) metrics. These flows have proved useful to tackle theoretically and numerically non-linear diffusion equations that model…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-03-10 Gabriel Peyré

Natural gradient methods have been used to optimise the parameters of probability distributions in a variety of settings, often resulting in fast-converging procedures. Unfortunately, for many distributions of interest, computing the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-28 Jonathan So , Richard E. Turner

The goal of this paper is to debunk and dispel the magic behind black-box optimizers and stochastic optimizers. It aims to build a solid foundation on how and why the techniques work. This manuscript crystallizes this knowledge by deriving…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-15 Jun Lu