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This paper proposes a new theoretical lens to view Wasserstein generative adversarial networks (WGANs). To minimize the Wasserstein-1 distance between the true data distribution and our estimate of it, we derive a distribution-dependent…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-05 Zachariah Malik , Yu-Jui Huang

In this paper, we propose a new and unified approach for nonparametric regression and conditional distribution learning. Our approach simultaneously estimates a regression function and a conditional generator using a generative learning…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-06-28 Shanshan Song , Tong Wang , Guohao Shen , Yuanyuan Lin , Jian Huang

Minimizing functionals in the space of probability distributions can be done with Wasserstein gradient flows. To solve them numerically, a possible approach is to rely on the Jordan-Kinderlehrer-Otto (JKO) scheme which is analogous to the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-16 Clément Bonet , Nicolas Courty , François Septier , Lucas Drumetz

Bayesian optimal experimental design (BOED) provides a powerful, decision-theoretic framework for selecting experiments so as to maximise the expected utility of the data to be collected. In practice, however, its applicability can be…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-13 Louis Sharrock

Existing deterministic variational inference approaches for diffusion processes use simple proposals and target the marginal density of the posterior. We construct the variational process as a controlled version of the prior process and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-02 Christian Wildner , Heinz Koeppl

Among dissimilarities between probability distributions, the Kernel Stein Discrepancy (KSD) has received much interest recently. We investigate the properties of its Wasserstein gradient flow to approximate a target probability distribution…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-05-24 Anna Korba , Pierre-Cyril Aubin-Frankowski , Szymon Majewski , Pierre Ablin

Variational inference is a popular method for estimating model parameters and conditional distributions in hierarchical and mixed models, which arise frequently in many settings in the health, social, and biological sciences. Variational…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-01-10 Ted Westling , Tyler H. McCormick

Mean-field variational inference is a method for approximate Bayesian posterior inference. It approximates a full posterior distribution with a factorized set of distributions by maximizing a lower bound on the marginal likelihood. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-07-03 John Paisley , David Blei , Michael Jordan

Bayesian inference with computationally expensive likelihood evaluations remains a significant challenge in many scientific domains. We propose normalizing flow regression (NFR), a novel offline inference method for approximating posterior…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-04-17 Chengkun Li , Bobby Huggins , Petrus Mikkola , Luigi Acerbi

Wasserstein gradient flows on probability measures have found a host of applications in various optimization problems. They typically arise as the continuum limit of exchangeable particle systems evolving by some mean-field interaction…

Probability · Mathematics 2023-06-30 Sewoong Oh , Soumik Pal , Raghav Somani , Raghavendra Tripathi

We provide a numerical analysis and computation of neural network projected schemes for approximating one dimensional Wasserstein gradient flows. We approximate the Lagrangian mapping functions of gradient flows by the class of two-layer…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2024-02-27 Xinzhe Zuo , Jiaxi Zhao , Shu Liu , Stanley Osher , Wuchen Li

The sliced Wasserstein flow (SWF), a nonparametric and implicit generative gradient flow, is transformed into a Liouville partial differential equation (PDE)-based formalism. First, the stochastic diffusive term from the Fokker-Planck…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-12 Jayshawn Cooper , Pilhwa Lee

These are lecture notes for various Summer and Winter schools that I have given. The notes describe the methodology called Variational Modelling, and focus on the application to the modelling of gradient-flow systems. I describe the…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2014-02-11 Mark A. Peletier

Recently, optimization on the Riemannian manifold have provided valuable insights to the optimization community. In this regard, extending these methods to to the Wasserstein space is of particular interest, since optimization on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-05 Mingyang Yi , Bohan Wang

Wasserstein gradient flows of maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) functionals with non-smooth Riesz kernels show a rich structure as singular measures can become absolutely continuous ones and conversely. In this paper we contribute to the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-22 Fabian Altekrüger , Johannes Hertrich , Gabriele Steidl

Beyond estimating parameters of interest from data, one of the key goals of statistical inference is to properly quantify uncertainty in these estimates. In Bayesian inference, this uncertainty is provided by the posterior distribution, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-03 Daniela de Albuquerque , John Pearson

Traditional discriminative computer vision relies predominantly on static projections, mapping input features to outputs in a single computational step. Although efficient, this paradigm lacks the iterative refinement and robustness…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Om Govind Jha , Manoj Bamniya , Ayon Borthakur

Deep generative modeling has seen impressive advances in recent years, to the point where it is now commonplace to see simulated samples (e.g., images) that closely resemble real-world data. However, generation quality is generally…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-08 Abdul Fatir Ansari , Ming Liang Ang , Harold Soh

In this paper, we study the stochastic Hamiltonian flow in Wasserstein manifold, the probability density space equipped with $L^2$-Wasserstein metric tensor, via the Wong--Zakai approximation. We begin our investigation by showing that the…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-12-01 Jianbo Cui , Shu Liu , Haomin Zhou

The Black Box Variational Inference (Ranganath et al. (2014)) algorithm provides a universal method for Variational Inference, but taking advantage of special properties of the approximation family or of the target can improve the…

Computation · Statistics 2019-06-18 Alexander Immer , Guillaume P. Dehaene