Related papers: Branching Stein Variational Gradient Descent for s…
Bayesian inference problems require sampling or approximating high-dimensional probability distributions. The focus of this paper is on the recently introduced Stein variational gradient descent methodology, a class of algorithms that rely…
Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD), a popular sampling algorithm, is often described as the kernelized gradient flow for the Kullback-Leibler divergence in the geometry of optimal transport. We introduce a new perspective on SVGD…
We introduce $\textit{Stein transport}$, a novel methodology for Bayesian inference designed to efficiently push an ensemble of particles along a predefined curve of tempered probability distributions. The driving vector field is chosen…
This paper studies the optimization of the KL functional on the Wasserstein space of probability measures, and develops a sampling framework based on Wasserstein gradient descent (WGD). We identify two important subclasses of the…
In this paper, we propose an infinite-dimensional version of the Stein variational gradient descent (iSVGD) method for solving Bayesian inverse problems. The method can generate approximate samples from posteriors efficiently. Based on the…
Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) is a widely used sampling algorithm that has been successfully applied in several areas of Machine Learning. SVGD operates by iteratively moving a set of interacting particles (which represent the…
In this paper, we present a flow-based method for global optimization of continuous Sobolev functions, called Stein Boltzmann Sampling (SBS). SBS initializes uniformly a number of particles representing candidate solutions, then uses the…
A crucial task in predictive maintenance is estimating the remaining useful life of physical systems. In the last decade, deep learning has improved considerably upon traditional model-based and statistical approaches in terms of predictive…
The fluctuation effect of gradient expectation and variance caused by parameter update between consecutive iterations is neglected or confusing by current mainstream gradient optimization algorithms.Using this fluctuation effect, combined…
Among dissimilarities between probability distributions, the Kernel Stein Discrepancy (KSD) has received much interest recently. We investigate the properties of its Wasserstein gradient flow to approximate a target probability distribution…
We propose and analyze a Stein variational reduced basis method (SVRB) to solve large-scale PDE-constrained Bayesian inverse problems. To address the computational challenge of drawing numerous samples requiring expensive PDE solves from…
There has been recent interest in developing scalable Bayesian sampling methods such as stochastic gradient MCMC (SG-MCMC) and Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) for big-data analysis. A standard SG-MCMC algorithm simulates samples…
We focus on the problem of efficient sampling and learning of probability densities by incorporating symmetries in probabilistic models. We first introduce Equivariant Stein Variational Gradient Descent algorithm -- an equivariant sampling…
Decentralized stochastic gradient method emerges as a promising solution for solving large-scale machine learning problems. This paper studies the decentralized Markov chain gradient descent (DMGD) algorithm - a variant of the decentralized…
Stein discrepancies (SDs) monitor convergence and non-convergence in approximate inference when exact integration and sampling are intractable. However, the computation of a Stein discrepancy can be prohibitive if the Stein operator - often…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a popular optimization method which has been applied to many important machine learning tasks such as Support Vector Machines and Deep Neural Networks. In order to parallelize SGD, minibatch training is…
Stochastic Gradient Descent with a constant learning rate (constant SGD) simulates a Markov chain with a stationary distribution. With this perspective, we derive several new results. (1) We show that constant SGD can be used as an…
Variance reduction (VR) methods boost the performance of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) by enabling the use of larger, constant stepsizes and preserving linear convergence rates. However, current variance reduced SGD methods require…
In recent years, particle-based variational inference (ParVI) methods such as Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) have grown in popularity as scalable methods for Bayesian inference. Unfortunately, the properties of such methods…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is one of the most widely used techniques for online optimization in machine learning. In this work, we accelerate SGD by adaptively learning how to sample the most useful training examples at each time…