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Bayesian inference typically relies on specifying a parametric model that approximates the data-generating process. However, misspecified models can yield poor convergence rates and unreliable posterior calibration. Bayesian empirical…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-10-27 Kenyon Ng , Weichang Yu , Howard D. Bondell

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)…

Computation · Statistics 2019-11-26 Linda S. L. Tan , Nial Friel

We propose a general framework using spike-and-slab prior distributions to aid with the development of high-dimensional Bayesian inference. Our framework allows inference with a general quasi-likelihood function. We show that highly…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-08-21 Yves Atchade , Anwesha Bhattacharyya

We develop unbiased implicit variational inference (UIVI), a method that expands the applicability of variational inference by defining an expressive variational family. UIVI considers an implicit variational distribution obtained in a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-02-07 Michalis K. Titsias , Francisco J. R. Ruiz

Motivation: Modern biobanks, with unprecedented sample sizes and phenotypic diversity, have become foundational resources for genomic studies, enabling powerful cross-phenotype and population-scale analyses. As studies grow in complexity,…

Applications · Statistics 2026-04-30 Yiran Li , John Whittaker , Sylvia Richardson , Helene Ruffieux

Bayesian analyses combine information represented by different terms in a joint Bayesian model. When one or more of the terms is misspecified, it can be helpful to restrict the use of information from suspect model components to modify…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-06-27 Xuejun Yu , David J. Nott , Michael Stanley Smith

Approximating complex probability densities is a core problem in modern statistics. In this paper, we introduce the concept of Variational Inference (VI), a popular method in machine learning that uses optimization techniques to estimate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-23 Ankush Ganguly , Samuel W. F. Earp

Bayesian phylogenetics typically estimates a posterior distribution, or aspects thereof, using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. These methods integrate over tree space by applying local rearrangements to move a tree through its space as a…

Bayesian nonparametric inferential procedures based on Markov chain Monte Carlo marginal methods typically yield point estimates in the form of posterior expectations. Though very useful and easy to implement in a variety of statistical…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2016-05-04 Julyan Arbel , Antonio Lijoi , Bernardo Nipoti

This paper introduces a Bayesian framework that combines Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling, dimensionality reduction, and neural density estimation to efficiently handle inverse problems that (i) must be solved multiple times, and…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2026-02-24 Giacomo Bottacini , Matteo Torzoni , Andrea Manzoni

Variational Bayes (VB) is a popular scalable alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo for Bayesian inference. We study a mean-field spike and slab VB approximation of widely used Bayesian model selection priors in sparse high-dimensional…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-09-07 Kolyan Ray , Botond Szabo , Gabriel Clara

Bayesian inference provides principled uncertainty quantification, but accurate posterior sampling with MCMC can be computationally prohibitive for modern applications. Variational inference (VI) offers a scalable alternative and often…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-14 Laura Battaglia , Stefano Cortinovis , Chris Holmes , David T. Frazier , Jack Jewson

Future wireless networks are envisioned to provide ubiquitous sensing services, which also gives rise to a substantial demand for high-dimensional non-convex parameter estimation, i.e., the associated likelihood function is non-convex and…

Signal Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-10-10 Zhixiang Hu , An Liu , Minjian Zhao

Density estimation is essential for generative modeling, particularly with the rise of modern neural networks. While existing methods capture complex data distributions, they often lack interpretability and uncertainty quantification.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-28 Lu Xu , Tsai Hor Chan , Kwok Fai Lam , Lequan Yu , Guosheng Yin

Bayesian inference plays an important role in advancing machine learning, but faces computational challenges when applied to complex models such as deep neural networks. Variational inference circumvents these challenges by formulating…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-08-03 Mohammad Emtiyaz Khan , Didrik Nielsen

Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms play a key role in the Bayesian approach to phylogenetic inference. In this paper, we present the first theoretical work analyzing the rate of convergence of several Markov chains widely used in…

Populations and Evolution · Quantitative Biology 2007-05-23 Elchanan Mossel , Eric Vigoda

Semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI) greatly enriches the expressiveness of variational families by considering implicit variational distributions defined in a hierarchical manner. However, due to the intractable densities of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-08-22 Longlin Yu , Cheng Zhang

Semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI) enhances the expressiveness of variational families through hierarchical semi-implicit distributions, but the intractability of their densities makes standard ELBO-based optimization biased. Recent…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-21 Longlin Yu , Ziheng Cheng , Shiyue Zhang , Cheng Zhang

Few Bayesian methods for analyzing high-dimensional sparse survival data provide scalable variable selection, effect estimation and uncertainty quantification. Such methods often either sacrifice uncertainty quantification by computing…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-07-06 Michael Komodromos , Eric Aboagye , Marina Evangelou , Sarah Filippi , Kolyan Ray

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…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-05-14 Ido Cohn , Tal El-Hay , Nir Friedman , Raz Kupferman