Related papers: Natural Gradient VI: Guarantees for Non-Conjugate …

This paper revisits the convergence of Stochastic Mirror Descent (SMD) in the contemporary nonconvex optimization setting. Existing results for batch-free nonconvex SMD restrict the choice of the distance generating function (DGF) to be…

Recent studies have shown that many nonconvex machine learning problems satisfy a generalized-smooth condition that extends beyond traditional smooth nonconvex optimization. However, the existing algorithms are not fully adapted to such…

In recent years, Full-Waveform Inversion (FWI) has been extensively used to derive high-resolution subsurface velocity models from seismic data. However, due to the nonlinearity and ill-posed nature of the problem, FWI requires a good…

Stein variational inference (SVI) is a sample-based approximate Bayesian inference technique that generates a sample set by jointly optimizing the samples' locations to minimize an information-theoretic measure of discrepancy with the…

Geoscientists use observed data to estimate properties of the Earth's interior. This often requires non-linear inverse problems to be solved and uncertainties to be estimated. Bayesian inference solves inverse problems under a probabilistic…

Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) is a nonparametric particle-based deterministic sampling algorithm. Despite its wide usage, understanding the theoretical properties of SVGD has remained a challenging problem. For sampling from a…

This short note reviews so-called Natural Gradient Descent (NGD) for multivariate Gaussians. The Fisher Information Matrix (FIM) is derived for several different parameterizations of Gaussians. Careful attention is paid to the symmetric…

Estimating a distribution given access to its unnormalized density is pivotal in Bayesian inference, where the posterior is generally known only up to an unknown normalizing constant. Variational inference and Markov chain Monte Carlo…

This paper is concerned with the approximation of probability distributions known up to normalization constants, with a focus on Bayesian inference for large-scale inverse problems in scientific computing. In this context, key challenges…

The mirror descent algorithm is known to be effective in situations where it is beneficial to adapt the mirror map to the underlying geometry of the optimization model. However, the effect of mirror maps on the geometry of distributed…

Recent years have seen a flurry of activities in designing provably efficient nonconvex procedures for solving statistical estimation problems. Due to the highly nonconvex nature of the empirical loss, state-of-the-art procedures often…

While Variational Inequality (VI) is a well-established mathematical framework that subsumes Nash equilibrium and saddle-point problems, less is known about its extension, Quasi-Variational Inequalities (QVI). QVI allows for cases where the…

In this paper we investigate how gradient-based algorithms such as gradient descent, (multi-pass) stochastic gradient descent, its persistent variant, and the Langevin algorithm navigate non-convex loss-landscapes and which of them is able…

Recently, Stochastic Variational Inference (SVI) has been increasingly attractive thanks to its ability to find good posterior approximations of probabilistic models. It optimizes the variational objective with stochastic optimization,…

The core principle of Variational Inference (VI) is to convert the statistical inference problem of computing complex posterior probability densities into a tractable optimization problem. This property enables VI to be faster than several…

Stochastic mirror descent (SMD) is a fairly new family of algorithms that has recently found a wide range of applications in optimization, machine learning, and control. It can be considered a generalization of the classical stochastic…

We provide the first convergence guarantee for full black-box variational inference (BBVI), also known as Monte Carlo variational inference. While preliminary investigations worked on simplified versions of BBVI (e.g., bounded domain,…

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…

This paper introduces the $f$-divergence variational inference ($f$-VI) that generalizes variational inference to all $f$-divergences. Initiated from minimizing a crafty surrogate $f$-divergence that shares the statistical consistency with…

Stochastic gradient Markov Chain Monte Carlo (SGMCMC) is considered the gold standard for Bayesian inference in large-scale models, such as Bayesian neural networks. Since practitioners face speed versus accuracy tradeoffs in these models,…