Related papers: Bayesian Model Selection via Mean-Field Variationa…

This work introduces a new method for selecting the number of components in finite mixture models (FMMs) using variational Bayes, inspired by the large-sample properties of the Evidence Lower Bound (ELBO) derived from mean-field (MF)…

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…

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…

Variational Bayes (VB) is a scalable alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) for Bayesian posterior inference. Though popular, VB comes with few theoretical guarantees, most of which focus on well-specified models. However, models…

We consider Bayesian variable selection for binary outcomes under a probit link with a spike-and-slab prior on the regression coefficients. Motivated by the computational challenges encountered by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) samplers in…

Variational inference (VI) is a popular method for approximating intractable posterior distributions in Bayesian inference and probabilistic machine learning. In this paper, we introduce a general framework for quantifying the statistical…

Bayesian Neural Networks (BNNs) are trained to optimize an entire distribution over their weights instead of a single set, having significant advantages in terms of, e.g., interpretability, multi-task learning, and calibration. Because of…

We study batch normalisation in the context of variational inference methods in Bayesian neural networks, such as mean-field or MC Dropout. We show that batch-normalisation does not affect the optimum of the evidence lower bound (ELBO).…

The Mean Field Variational Bayes (MFVB) method is one of the most computationally efficient techniques for Bayesian inference. However, its use has been restricted to models with conjugate priors or those that require analytical…

Variational inference, such as the mean-field (MF) approximation, requires certain conjugacy structures for efficient computation. These can impose unnecessary restrictions on the viable prior distribution family and further constraints on…

Mean-field variational inference (MFVI) is a widely used method for approximating high-dimensional probability distributions by product measures. This paper studies the stability properties of the mean-field approximation when the target…

The mean field variational inference (MFVI) formulation restricts the general Bayesian inference problem to the subspace of product measures. We present a framework to analyze MFVI algorithms, which is inspired by a similar development for…

When training large models on limited data, avoiding overfitting is paramount. Common grid search or smarter search methods rely on expensive separate runs for each candidate hyperparameter, while carving out a validation set that reduces…

Variable selection for a multiple regression model (Noisy Linear Perceptron) is studied with a mean field approximation. In our Bayesian framework, variable selection is formulated as estimation of discrete parameters that indicate a subset…

Variational Inference (VI) provides a scalable framework for Bayesian inference by optimizing the Evidence Lower Bound (ELBO), but convergence analysis remains challenging due to the objective's non-convexity and non-smoothness in Euclidean…

In this paper we consider the problem of inference in statistical models characterized by moment restrictions by casting the problem within the Exponentially Tilted Empirical Likelihood (ETEL) framework. Because the ETEL function has a well…

We consider the Bayesian analysis of models in which the unknown distribution of the outcomes is specified up to a set of conditional moment restrictions. The nonparametric exponentially tilted empirical likelihood function is constructed…

We propose a scalable variational Bayes method for statistical inference for a single or low-dimensional subset of the coordinates of a high-dimensional parameter in sparse linear regression. Our approach relies on assigning a mean-field…

Variational Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) perform variational inference over weights, but it is difficult to specify meaningful priors and approximate posteriors in a high-dimensional weight space. We introduce functional variational…

Bayesian models provide a framework for probabilistic modelling of complex datasets. However, many of such models are computationally demanding especially in the presence of large datasets. On the other hand, in sensor network applications,…