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

Continuous-time Bayesian networks is a natural structured representation language for multicomponent stochastic processes that evolve continuously over time. Despite the compact representation, inference in such models is intractable even…

The Evidence Lower Bound (ELBO) is a quantity that plays a key role in variational inference. It can also be used as a criterion in model selection. However, though extremely popular in practice in the variational Bayes community, there has…

A mean field variational Bayes approach to support vector machines (SVMs) using the latent variable representation on Polson & Scott (2012) is presented. This representation allows circumvention of many of the shortcomings associated with…

Matrix factorization (MF) has been widely applied to collaborative filtering in recommendation systems. Its Bayesian variants can derive posterior distributions of user and item embeddings, and are more robust to sparse ratings. However,…

A key challenge for modern Bayesian statistics is how to perform scalable inference of posterior distributions. To address this challenge, variational Bayes (VB) methods have emerged as a popular alternative to the classical Markov chain…

The marginal likelihood, also known as the evidence, is regarded as a mathematical embodiment of Occam's razor, enabling model selection that avoids overfitting. The evidence lower bound (ELBO) objective from variational inference has also…

Bayesian methods have proved powerful in many applications for the inference of model parameters from data. These methods are based on Bayes' theorem, which itself is deceptively simple. However, in practice the computations required are…

Non-linear hierarchical models are commonly used in many disciplines. However, inference in the presence of non-nested effects and on large datasets is challenging and computationally burdensome. This paper provides two contributions to…

Mean field variational Bayes (MFVB) is a popular posterior approximation method due to its fast runtime on large-scale data sets. However, it is well known that a major failing of MFVB is that it underestimates the uncertainty of model…

Variational Bayes (VB) provides a computationally efficient alternative to Markov Chain Monte Carlo, especially for high-dimensional and large-scale inference. However, existing theory on VB primarily focuses on fixed-dimensional settings…

To make decisions based on a model fit with auto-encoding variational Bayes (AEVB), practitioners often let the variational distribution serve as a surrogate for the posterior distribution. This approach yields biased estimates of the…

Many modern unsupervised or semi-supervised machine learning algorithms rely on Bayesian probabilistic models. These models are usually intractable and thus require approximate inference. Variational inference (VI) lets us approximate a…

Deriving Bayesian inference for exponential random graph models (ERGMs) is a challenging "doubly intractable" problem as the normalizing constants of the likelihood and posterior density are both intractable. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)…

A framework to boost the efficiency of Bayesian inference in probabilistic programs is introduced by embedding a sampler inside a variational posterior approximation. We call it the refined variational approximation. Its strength lies both…

We propose a fast and theoretically grounded method for Bayesian variable selection and model averaging in latent variable regression models. Our framework addresses three interrelated challenges: (i) intractable marginal likelihoods, (ii)…

We propose a family of variational approximations to Bayesian posterior distributions, called $\alpha$-VB, with provable statistical guarantees. The standard variational approximation is a special case of $\alpha$-VB with $\alpha=1$. When…

This is a review of asymptotic and non-asymptotic behaviour of Bayesian methods under model specification. In particular we focus on consistency, i.e. convergence of the posterior distribution to the point mass at the best parametric…

We consider the problem of approximate Bayesian inference in log-supermodular models. These models encompass regular pairwise MRFs with binary variables, but allow to capture high-order interactions, which are intractable for existing…

Sparse models are desirable for many applications across diverse domains as they can perform automatic variable selection, aid interpretability, and provide regularization. When fitting sparse models in a Bayesian framework, however,…

Empirical likelihood is a popular nonparametric statistical tool that does not require any distributional assumptions. In this paper, we explore the possibility of conducting variable selection via Bayesian empirical likelihood. We show…