Related papers: Forward $\chi^2$ Divergence Based Variational Impo…
The recognition network in deep latent variable models such as variational autoencoders (VAEs) relies on amortized inference for efficient posterior approximation that can scale up to large datasets. However, this technique has also been…
We consider a Bayesian approach to variable selection in the presence of high dimensional covariates based on a hierarchical model that places prior distributions on the regression coefficients as well as on the model space. We adopt the…
Both classification and regression tasks are susceptible to the biased distribution of training data. However, existing approaches are focused on the class-imbalanced learning and cannot be applied to the problems of numerical regression…
Importance sampling (IS) is an efficient stand-in for model refitting in performing (LOO) cross-validation (CV) on a Bayesian model. IS inverts the Bayesian update for a single observation by reweighting posterior samples. The so-called…
Spatial regression models have a variety of applications in several fields ranging from economics to public health. Typically, it is of interest to select important exogenous predictors of the spatially autocorrelated response variable. In…
Although conceptually related, variable selection and relative importance (RI) analysis have been treated quite differently in the literature. While RI is typically used for post-hoc model explanation, this paper explores its potential for…
We propose Diffusion Model Variational Inference (DMVI), a novel method for automated approximate inference in probabilistic programming languages (PPLs). DMVI utilizes diffusion models as variational approximations to the true posterior…
Variational methods are employed in situations where exact Bayesian inference becomes intractable due to the difficulty in performing certain integrals. Typically, variational methods postulate a tractable posterior and formulate a lower…
Sampling-based algorithms, which eliminate ''unimportant'' computations during forward and/or back propagation (BP), offer potential solutions to accelerate neural network training. However, since sampling introduces approximations to…
This work proposes a novel method through which local information about the target density can be used to construct an efficient importance sampler. The backbone of the proposed method is the Incremental Mixture Importance Sampling (IMIS)…
Recent years have witnessed growing interest in semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI) methods due to their ability to rapidly generate samples from complex distributions. However, since the likelihood of these samples is non-trivial to…
We propose a new variational approximation of the joint posterior distribution of the log-volatility in the context of large Bayesian VARs. In contrast to existing approaches that are based on local approximations, the new proposal provides…
The widespread adoption of large language models (LLMs) across industries has increased the demand for high-quality and customizable outputs. However, traditional alignment methods often require retraining large pretrained models, making it…
Importance sampling is a popular technique in Bayesian inference: by reweighting samples drawn from a proposal distribution we are able to obtain samples and moment estimates from a Bayesian posterior over latent variables. Recent work,…
In this paper, we introduce a new form of amortized variational inference by using the forward KL divergence in a joint-contrastive variational loss. The resulting forward amortized variational inference is a likelihood-free method as its…
In variational inference (VI), the practitioner approximates a high-dimensional distribution $\pi$ with a simple surrogate one, often a (product) Gaussian distribution. However, in many cases of practical interest, Gaussian distributions…
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…
Variational approaches to approximate Bayesian inference provide very efficient means of performing parameter estimation and model selection. Among these, so-called variational-Laplace or VL schemes rely on Gaussian approximations to…
Variational representations of divergences and distances between high-dimensional probability distributions offer significant theoretical insights and practical advantages in numerous research areas. Recently, they have gained popularity in…
We present Sequential Neural Variational Inference (SNVI), an approach to perform Bayesian inference in models with intractable likelihoods. SNVI combines likelihood-estimation (or likelihood-ratio-estimation) with variational inference to…