Related papers: Information-Theoretic Safe Bayesian Optimization

Bayesian analysis is a framework for parameter estimation that applies even in uncertainty regimes where the commonly used local (frequentist) analysis based on the Cram\'er-Rao bound is not well defined. In particular, it applies when no…

Maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation, like all Bayesian methods, depends on prior assumptions. These assumptions are often chosen to promote specific features in the recovered estimate. The form of the chosen prior determines the shape of…

This paper studies the problem of globally optimizing a variable of interest that is part of a causal model in which a sequence of interventions can be performed. This problem arises in biology, operational research, communications and,…

Optimum parameter estimation methods require knowledge of a parametric probability density that statistically describes the available observations. In this work we examine Bayesian and non-Bayesian parameter estimation problems under a…

The increasing availability of graph-structured data motivates the task of optimising over functions defined on the node set of graphs. Traditional graph search algorithms can be applied in this case, but they may be sample-inefficient and…

Inverse optimization (IO) is used to estimate unknown parameters of an optimization model from observed decisions. In the data-driven context, the estimated parameters are inherently uncertain, yet quantifying this uncertainty has received…

Noninformative uniform priors are staples of Bayesian inference, especially in Bayesian machine learning. This study challenges the assumption that they are optimal and their use in Bayesian inference yields optimal outcomes. Instead of…

The Markov Decision Process (MDP) is a popular framework for sequential decision-making problems, and uncertainty quantification is an essential component of it to learn optimal decision-making strategies. In particular, a Bayesian…

We present a strategy for selecting the values of elasticity parameters by comparing walk-away vertical seismic profiling data with a multilayered model in the context of Bayesian Information Criterion. We consider $P$-wave traveltimes and…

A new algorithm is developed to tackle the issue of sampling non-Gaussian model parameter posterior probability distributions that arise from solutions to Bayesian inverse problems. The algorithm aims to mitigate some of the hurdles faced…

When learning policies for robotic systems from data, safety is a major concern, as violation of safety constraints may cause hardware damage. SafeOpt is an efficient Bayesian optimization (BO) algorithm that can learn policies while…

We consider a social planner faced with a stream of myopic selfish agents. The goal of the social planner is to maximize the social welfare, however, it is limited to using only information asymmetry (regarding previous outcomes) and cannot…

We propose an iterative method to safely learn the unmodeled dynamics of a nonlinear system using Bayesian Gaussian process (GP) models with polynomial kernel functions. The method maintains safety by ensuring that the system state stays…

We use the language of uninformative Bayesian prior choice to study the selection of appropriately simple effective models. We advocate for the prior which maximizes the mutual information between parameters and predictions, learning as…

We propose a novel actor-critic, model-free reinforcement learning algorithm which employs a Bayesian method of parameter space exploration to solve environments. A Gaussian process is used to learn the expected return of a policy given the…

Adjustable hyperparameters of machine learning models typically impact various key trade-offs such as accuracy, fairness, robustness, or inference cost. Our goal in this paper is to find a configuration that adheres to user-specified limits…

Bayesian optimal experimental design (OED) seeks to conduct the most informative experiment under budget constraints to update the prior knowledge of a system to its posterior from the experimental data in a Bayesian framework. Such…

This paper introduces a method of identifying a maximal set of safe strategies from data for stochastic systems with unknown dynamics using barrier certificates. The first step is learning the dynamics of the system via Gaussian process…

This paper addresses the problem of planning a safe (i.e., collision-free) trajectory from an initial state to a goal region when the obstacle space is a-priori unknown and is incrementally revealed online, e.g., through line-of-sight…

We propose a general method to carry out a valid Bayesian analysis of a finite-dimensional `targeted' parameter in the presence of a finite-dimensional nuisance parameter. We apply our methods to causal inference based on estimating…