Related papers: A Trust-Region Method for Graphical Stein Variatio…
Variational inference (VI) is a widely used framework in Bayesian estimation. For most of the non-Gaussian statistical models, it is infeasible to find an analytically tractable solution to estimate the posterior distributions of the…
In this work, we investigate the large-scale mean-field variational inference (MFVI) problem from a mini-batch primal-dual perspective. By reformulating MFVI as a constrained finite-sum problem, we develop a novel primal-dual algorithm…
Stochastic planning can be reduced to probabilistic inference in large discrete graphical models, but hardness of inference requires approximation schemes to be used. In this paper we argue that such applications can be disentangled along…
Several recent works have explored stochastic gradient methods for variational inference that exploit the geometry of the variational-parameter space. However, the theoretical properties of these methods are not well-understood and these…
Envelope models provide a sufficient dimension reduction framework for multivariate regression analysis. Bayesian inference for these models has been developed primarily using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. Specifically, Gibbs…
Sampling and Variational Inference (VI) are two large families of methods for approximate inference that have complementary strengths. Sampling methods excel at approximating arbitrary probability distributions, but can be inefficient. VI…
Amortized variational inference is an often employed framework in simulation-based inference that produces a posterior approximation that can be rapidly computed given any new observation. Unfortunately, there are few guarantees about the…
We target the problem of finding a local minimum in non-convex finite-sum minimization. Towards this goal, we first prove that the trust region method with inexact gradient and Hessian estimation can achieve a convergence rate of order…
Particle based optimization algorithms have recently been developed as sampling methods that iteratively update a set of particles to approximate a target distribution. In particular Stein variational gradient descent has gained attention…
Bayesian inference represents a principled way to incorporate Earth structure uncertainty in full-waveform moment tensor inversions, but traditional approaches generally require significant approximations that risk biasing the resulting…
Variational inference (VI) is a computationally efficient and scalable methodology for approximate Bayesian inference. It strikes a balance between accuracy of uncertainty quantification and practical tractability. It excels at generative…
In this paper, we investigate the theoretical properties of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for statistical inference in the context of nonconvex optimization problems, which have been relatively unexplored compared to convex settings.…
Many methods for machine learning rely on approximate inference from intractable probability distributions. Variational inference approximates such distributions by tractable models that can be subsequently used for approximate inference.…
We introduce a class of generic spike-and-slab priors for high-dimensional linear regression with grouped variables and present a Coordinate-ascent Variational Inference (CAVI) algorithm for obtaining an optimal variational Bayes…
Constrained optimization in high-dimensional black-box settings is difficult due to expensive evaluations, the lack of gradient information, and complex feasibility regions. In this work, we propose a Bayesian optimization method that…
Distributed inference/estimation in Bayesian framework in the context of sensor networks has recently received much attention due to its broad applicability. The variational Bayesian (VB) algorithm is a technique for approximating…
Automatic Differentiation Variational Inference (ADVI) is efficient in learning probabilistic models. Classic ADVI relies on the parametric approach to approximate the posterior. In this paper, we develop a spline-based nonparametric…
For complex simulation problems, inferring parameters often precludes the use of classical likelihood-based techniques due to intractable likelihoods. Simulation-based inference (SBI) methods offer a likelihood-free approach to directly…
Seismic surface wave tomography uses surface wave information to obtain velocity structures in the subsurface. Due to data noise and nonlinearity of the problem, surface wave tomography often has non-unique solutions. It is therefore…
When a statistical model $\{P_{\theta} : \theta \in \Theta\}$ lacks analytically tractable likelihoods, parametric statistical inference based on data generated from an unknown underlying distribution $P$ can still be performed as long as…