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Related papers: Variational Analysis in the Wasserstein Space

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Variational inference is a technique that approximates a target distribution by optimizing within the parameter space of variational families. On the other hand, Wasserstein gradient flows describe optimization within the space of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-11-01 Mingxuan Yi , Song Liu

We consider the population Wasserstein barycenter problem for random probability measures supported on a finite set of points and generated by an online stream of data. This leads to a complicated stochastic optimization problem where the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-12-06 Daniil Tiapkin , Alexander Gasnikov , Pavel Dvurechensky

We consider distributionally robust optimization problems where the uncertainty is modeled via a structured Wasserstein ambiguity set. Specifically, the ambiguity is restricted to product measures $P^{\otimes N}$, where $P$ lies within a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-14 Andrey Kharitenko , Marta Fochesato , Anastasios Tsiamis , Niklas Schmid , John Lygeros

Variational analysis provides the theoretical foundations and practical tools for constructing optimization algorithms without being restricted to smooth or convex problems. We survey the central concepts in the context of a concrete but…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-08 Johannes O. Royset

We investigate a stochastic program with expected value constraints, addressing the problem in a general context through Distributionally Robust Optimization (DRO) approach using Wasserstein distances, where the ambiguity set depends on the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-04-18 Diego Fonseca , Mauricio Junca

This work presents a new Distributionally Robust Optimization approach, using $p$-Wasserstein metrics, to analyze a stochastic program in a general context. The ambiguity set in this approach depends on the decision variable and is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-03-08 Diego Fonseca , Mauricio Junca

We propose randomized subspace gradient methods for high-dimensional constrained optimization. While there have been similarly purposed studies on unconstrained optimization problems, there have been few on constrained optimization problems…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-10 Ryota Nozawa , Pierre-Louis Poirion , Akiko Takeda

This paper develops a novel approach to necessary optimality conditions for constrained variational problems defined in generally incomplete subspaces of absolutely continuous functions. Our approach involves reducing a variational problem…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-11-01 Ashkan Mohammadi , Boris Mordukhovich

Variational problems that involve Wasserstein distances have been recently proposed to summarize and learn from probability measures. Despite being conceptually simple, such problems are computationally challenging because they involve…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-08-26 Marco Cuturi , Gabriel Peyré

We consider a data-driven robust hypothesis test where the optimal test will minimize the worst-case performance regarding distributions that are close to the empirical distributions with respect to the Wasserstein distance. This leads to a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-06-01 Liyan Xie , Rui Gao , Yao Xie

We establish the first mathematically rigorous link between Bayesian, variational Bayesian, and ensemble methods. A key step towards this it to reformulate the non-convex optimisation problem typically encountered in deep learning as a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-10-24 Veit David Wild , Sahra Ghalebikesabi , Dino Sejdinovic , Jeremias Knoblauch

We study stochastic optimization problems with chance and risk constraints, where in the latter, risk is quantified in terms of the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). We consider the distributionally robust versions of these problems, where…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-12-17 Ashish Cherukuri , Ashish R. Hota

We study the scenario approach for solving chance-constrained optimization in time-coupled dynamic environments. Scenario generation methods approximate the true feasible region from scenarios generated independently and identically from…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-04-02 Apurv Shukla , Qian Zhang , Le Xie

Data represented by probability measures arise as empirical distributions, posterior distributions, and feature-based representations of complex objects. We study heterogeneity in a population of probability measures through the expected…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-17 Kisung You

We introduce adaptive, tuning-free step size schedules for gradient-based sampling algorithms obtained as time-discretizations of Wasserstein gradient flows. The result is a suite of tuning-free sampling algorithms, including tuning-free…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-10-30 Louis Sharrock , Christopher Nemeth

We propose a novel approach to the problem of multilevel clustering, which aims to simultaneously partition data in each group and discover grouping patterns among groups in a potentially large hierarchically structured corpus of data. Our…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-06-14 Nhat Ho , XuanLong Nguyen , Mikhail Yurochkin , Hung Hai Bui , Viet Huynh , Dinh Phung

Optimal Transport has received much attention in Machine Learning as it allows to compare probability distributions by exploiting the geometry of the underlying space. However, in its original formulation, solving this problem suffers from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-27 Clément Bonet

Optimal transport has gained significant attention in recent years due to its effectiveness in deep learning and computer vision. Its descendant metric, the Wasserstein distance, has been particularly successful in measuring distribution…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-02-18 Kaiwen Shi

Wasserstein barycenters define averages of probability measures in a geometrically meaningful way. Their use is increasingly popular in applied fields, such as image, geometry or language processing. In these fields however, the probability…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2023-03-13 Guillaume Carlier , Alex Delalande , Quentin Merigot

We study the problem of estimating a sequence of evolving probability distributions from historical data, where the underlying distribution changes over time in a nonstationary and nonparametric manner. To capture gradual changes, we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-16 Edward J. Anderson , Dominic S. T. Keehan