Related papers: Variational inference for hierarchical models with…
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…
We propose a general framework for obtaining probabilistic solutions to PDE-based inverse problems. Bayesian methods are attractive for uncertainty quantification but assume knowledge of the likelihood model or data generation process. This…
Inference methods are often formulated as variational approximations: these approximations allow easy evaluation of statistics by marginalization or linear response, but these estimates can be inconsistent. We show that by introducing…
Mean-field variational inference is a method for approximate Bayesian posterior inference. It approximates a full posterior distribution with a factorized set of distributions by maximizing a lower bound on the marginal likelihood. This…
Inference for GP models with non-Gaussian noises is computationally expensive when dealing with large datasets. Many recent inference methods approximate the posterior distribution with a simpler distribution defined on a small number of…
Although Bayesian methods are robust and principled, their application in practice could be limited since they typically rely on computationally intensive Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms for their implementation. One possible solution…
Variational Optimization forms a differentiable upper bound on an objective. We show that approaches such as Natural Evolution Strategies and Gaussian Perturbation, are special cases of Variational Optimization in which the expectations are…
This paper presents an approximate method for performing Bayesian inference in models with conditional independence over a decentralized network of learning agents. The method first employs variational inference on each individual learning…
A fundamental drawback of kernel-based statistical models is their limited scalability to large data sets, which requires resorting to approximations. In this work, we focus on the popular Gaussian kernel and on techniques to linearize…
This paper argues that the half-Cauchy distribution should replace the inverse-Gamma distribution as a default prior for a top-level scale parameter in Bayesian hierarchical models, at least for cases where a proper prior is necessary. Our…
We propose a scalable variational Bayes method for statistical inference for a single or low-dimensional subset of the coordinates of a high-dimensional parameter in sparse linear regression. Our approach relies on assigning a mean-field…
Estimation and prediction in high dimensional multivariate factor stochastic volatility models is an important and active research area because such models allow a parsimonious representation of multivariate stochastic volatility. Bayesian…
Models with a large number of latent variables are often used to fully utilize the information in big or complex data. However, they can be difficult to estimate using standard approaches, and variational inference methods are a popular…
Bayesian methods have proved powerful in many applications for the inference of model parameters from data. These methods are based on Bayes' theorem, which itself is deceptively simple. However, in practice the computations required are…
Software is highly contextual. While there are cross-cutting `global' lessons, individual software projects exhibit many `local' properties. This data heterogeneity makes drawing local conclusions from global data dangerous. A key research…
Bayesian model selection poses two main challenges: the specification of parameter priors for all models, and the computation of the resulting Bayes factors between models. There is now a large literature on automatic and objective…
Solving Bayesian inference problems approximately with variational approaches can provide fast and accurate results. Capturing correlation within the approximation requires an explicit parametrization. This intrinsically limits this…
A framework to boost the efficiency of Bayesian inference in probabilistic programs is introduced by embedding a sampler inside a variational posterior approximation. We call it the refined variational approximation. Its strength lies both…
Penalized B-splines are routinely used in additive models to describe smooth changes in a response with quantitative covariates. It is typically done through the conditional mean in the exponential family using generalized additive models…
Variable selection techniques have become increasingly popular amongst statisticians due to an increased number of regression and classification applications involving high-dimensional data where we expect some predictors to be unimportant.…