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We show how to use a variational approximation to the logistic function to perform approximate inference in Bayesian networks containing discrete nodes with continuous parents. Essentially, we convert the logistic function to a Gaussian,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-01-30 Kevin Murphy

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

All discretized numerical models contain modelling errors - this reality is amplified when reduced-order models are used. The ability to accurately approximate modelling errors informs statistics on model confidence and improves…

Computational Physics · Physics 2021-03-17 Danny Smyl , Tyler N. Tallman , Jonathan A. Black , Andreas Hauptmann , Dong Liu

Deep Gaussian processes provide a flexible approach to probabilistic modelling of data using either supervised or unsupervised learning. For tractable inference approximations to the marginal likelihood of the model must be made. The…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2014-12-04 James Hensman , Neil D. Lawrence

We present a novel adaptation of active learning to graph-based semi-supervised learning (SSL) under non-Gaussian Bayesian models. We present an approximation of non-Gaussian distributions to adapt previously Gaussian-based acquisition…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-07-23 Kevin Miller , Hao Li , Andrea L. Bertozzi

Latent Gaussian models (LGMs) are widely used in statistics and machine learning. Bayesian inference in non-conjugate LGMs is difficult due to intractable integrals involving the Gaussian prior and non-conjugate likelihoods. Algorithms…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-06-06 Mohammad Emtiyaz Khan , Aleksandr Y. Aravkin , Michael P. Friedlander , Matthias Seeger

Gaussian mixture filters for nonlinear systems usually rely on severe approximations when calculating mixtures in the prediction and filtering step. Thus, offline approximations of noise densities by Gaussian mixture densities to reduce the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-06-02 Ondŕej Straka , Uwe D. Hanebeck

We consider the problem of parametric statistical inference when likelihood computations are prohibitively expensive but sampling from the model is possible. Several so-called likelihood-free methods have been developed to perform inference…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-09-14 Owen Thomas , Ritabrata Dutta , Jukka Corander , Samuel Kaski , Michael U. Gutmann

This paper proposes a novel Hessian approximation for Maximum a Posteriori estimation problems in robotics involving Gaussian mixture likelihoods. Previous approaches manipulate the Gaussian mixture likelihood into a form that allows the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-08-28 Vassili Korotkine , Mitchell Cohen , James Richard Forbes

Scientists continue to develop increasingly complex mechanistic models to reflect their knowledge more realistically. Statistical inference using these models can be challenging since the corresponding likelihood function is often…

Computation · Statistics 2026-01-07 Joshua J Bon , David J Warne , David J Nott , Christopher Drovandi

Standard present day large-scale structure (LSS) analyses make a major assumption in their Bayesian parameter inference --- that the likelihood has a Gaussian form. For summary statistics currently used in LSS, this assumption, even if the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2019-03-06 ChangHoon Hahn , Florian Beutler , Manodeep Sinha , Andreas Berlind , Shirley Ho , David W. Hogg

Many application domains such as ecology or genomics have to deal with multivariate non Gaussian observations. A typical example is the joint observation of the respective abundances of a set of species in a series of sites, aiming to…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-05-01 Julien Chiquet , Mahendra Mariadassou , Stéphane Robin

We propose a Likelihood Matching approach for training diffusion models by first establishing an equivalence between the likelihood of the target data distribution and a likelihood along the sample path of the reverse diffusion. To…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-23 Lei Qian , Wu Su , Yanqi Huang , Song Xi Chen

Models with intractable likelihood functions arise in areas including network analysis and spatial statistics, especially those involving Gibbs random fields. Posterior parameter es timation in these settings is termed a doubly-intractable…

Computation · Statistics 2018-10-16 Lampros Bouranis , Nial Friel , Florian Maire

Statistical inference for time series such as curve estimation for time-varying models or testing for existence of change-point have garnered significant attention. However, these works are generally restricted to the assumption of…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-08-08 Soham Bonnerjee , Sayar Karmakar , Wei Biao Wu

We propose a new sampling-based approach for approximate inference in filtering problems. Instead of approximating conditional distributions with a finite set of states, as done in particle filters, our approach approximates the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-03 Xuan Su , Wee Sun Lee , Zhen Zhang

This paper introduces a new method for performing computational inference on log-Gaussian Cox processes. The likelihood is approximated directly by making novel use of a continuously specified Gaussian random field. We show that for…

Computation · Statistics 2015-11-02 Daniel Simpson , Janine Illian , Finn Lindgren , Sigrunn Sørbye , Håvard Rue

Variational inference techniques based on inducing variables provide an elegant framework for scalable posterior estimation in Gaussian process (GP) models. Besides enabling scalability, one of their main advantages over sparse…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-24 Simone Rossi , Markus Heinonen , Edwin V. Bonilla , Zheyang Shen , Maurizio Filippone

Variational inference, as an alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling, has played a transformative role in enabling scalable computation for complex Bayesian models. Nevertheless, existing approaches often depend on either rigid…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-21 Somjit Roy , Pritam Dey , Debdeep Pati , Bani K. Mallick

Many approximate Bayesian inference methods assume a particular parametric form for approximating the posterior distribution. A multivariate Gaussian distribution provides a convenient density for such approaches; examples include the…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-02-20 Jackson Zhou , Clara Grazian , John Ormerod