Related papers: ELBOing Stein: Variational Bayes with Stein Mixtur…
Particle-optimization-based sampling (POS) is a recently developed effective sampling technique that interactively updates a set of particles. A representative algorithm is the Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD). We prove, under…
Simulation-based inference (SBI) is a method to perform inference on a variety of complex scientific models with challenging inference (inverse) problems. Bayesian Optimal Experimental Design (BOED) aims to efficiently use experimental…
Probability estimation of tree topologies is one of the fundamental tasks in phylogenetic inference. The recently proposed subsplit Bayesian networks (SBNs) provide a powerful probabilistic graphical model for tree topology probability…
Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) is a deterministic interacting-particle method for sampling from a target probability measure given access to its score function. In the mean-field and continuous-time limit, it is known that the…
A new method for learning variational autoencoders (VAEs) is developed, based on Stein variational gradient descent. A key advantage of this approach is that one need not make parametric assumptions about the form of the encoder…
Understanding the gradient variance of black-box variational inference (BBVI) is a crucial step for establishing its convergence and developing algorithmic improvements. However, existing studies have yet to show that the gradient variance…
Stochastic Natural Gradient Variational Inference (NGVI) is a widely used method for approximating posterior distribution in probabilistic models. Despite its empirical success and foundational role in variational inference, its theoretical…
Minimizing the inclusive Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence with stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is challenging since its gradient is defined as an integral over the posterior. Recently, multiple methods have been proposed to run SGD with…
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…
We introduce a new variational inference (VI) framework, called energetic variational inference (EVI). It minimizes the VI objective function based on a prescribed energy-dissipation law. Using the EVI framework, we can derive many existing…
We propose a variational Bayesian (VB) procedure for high-dimensional linear model inferences with heavy tail shrinkage priors, such as student-t prior. Theoretically, we establish the consistency of the proposed VB method and prove that…
Stochastic natural gradient variational inference (NGVI) is a popular posterior inference method with applications in various probabilistic models. Despite its wide usage, little is known about the non-asymptotic convergence rate in the…
We extend the existing framework of semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI) and introduce doubly semi-implicit variational inference (DSIVI), a way to perform variational inference and learning when both the approximate posterior and the…
We provide finite-particle convergence rates for the Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) algorithm in the Kernelized Stein Discrepancy ($\mathsf{KSD}$) and Wasserstein-2 metrics. Our key insight is that the time derivative of the…
A fundamental challenge in Bayesian inference is efficient representation of a target distribution. Many non-parametric approaches do so by sampling a large number of points using variants of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). We propose an…
We propose a simple algorithm to train stochastic neural networks to draw samples from given target distributions for probabilistic inference. Our method is based on iteratively adjusting the neural network parameters so that the output…
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…
The Importance-Weighted Evidence Lower Bound (IW-ELBO) has emerged as an effective objective for variational inference (VI), tightening the standard ELBO and mitigating the mode-seeking behaviour. However, optimizing the IW-ELBO in…
Time-lapse seismic full-waveform inversion (FWI) provides estimates of dynamic changes in the subsurface by performing multiple seismic surveys at different times. Since FWI problems are highly non-linear and non-unique, it is important to…
Decentralized coordination for multi-robot systems involves planning in challenging, high-dimensional spaces. The planning problem is particularly challenging in the presence of obstacles and different sources of uncertainty such as…