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In Bayesian analysis, the posterior follows from the data and a choice of a prior and a likelihood. One hopes that the posterior is robust to reasonable variation in the choice of prior and likelihood, since this choice is made by the…

Methodology · Statistics 2015-12-09 Ryan Giordano , Tamara Broderick , Michael Jordan

Mean field variational Bayes (MFVB) is a popular posterior approximation method due to its fast runtime on large-scale data sets. However, it is well known that a major failing of MFVB is that it underestimates the uncertainty of model…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-12-24 Ryan Giordano , Tamara Broderick , Michael Jordan

Variational Bayes (VB) is a popular estimation method for Bayesian inference. However, most existing VB algorithms are restricted to cases where the likelihood is tractable, which precludes their use in many important situations. Tran et…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-05-19 David Gunawan , Minh-Ngoc Tran , Robert Kohn

Variational Bayes (VB) has been used to facilitate the calculation of the posterior distribution in the context of Bayesian inference of the parameters of nonlinear models from data. Previously an analytical formulation of VB has been…

Signal Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-07-06 Michael A. Chappell , Martin S. Craig , Mark W. Woolrich

Variational Bayes (VB) is a popular scalable alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo for Bayesian inference. We study a mean-field spike and slab VB approximation of widely used Bayesian model selection priors in sparse high-dimensional…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-09-07 Kolyan Ray , Botond Szabo , Gabriel Clara

Variational Bayes (VB) is a scalable alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) for Bayesian posterior inference. Though popular, VB comes with few theoretical guarantees, most of which focus on well-specified models. However, models…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-08-13 Yixin Wang , David M. Blei

Variational inference is an approximation framework for Bayesian inference that seeks to improve quantified uncertainty in predictions by optimizing a simplified distribution over parameters to stand in for the full posterior. Capturing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-12 Jed A. Duersch

Bayesian inference provides principled uncertainty quantification, but accurate posterior sampling with MCMC can be computationally prohibitive for modern applications. Variational inference (VI) offers a scalable alternative and often…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-14 Laura Battaglia , Stefano Cortinovis , Chris Holmes , David T. Frazier , Jack Jewson

Model comparison is the cornerstone of theoretical progress in psychological research. Common practice overwhelmingly relies on tools that evaluate competing models by balancing in-sample descriptive adequacy against model flexibility, with…

Applications · Statistics 2021-10-11 Viet-Hung Dao , David Gunawan , Minh-Ngoc Tran , Robert Kohn , Guy E. Hawkins , Scott D. Brown

Variational Bayes (VB), a method originating from machine learning, enables fast and scalable estimation of complex probabilistic models. Thus far, applications of VB in discrete choice analysis have been limited to mixed logit models with…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-01-17 Rico Krueger , Prateek Bansal , Michel Bierlaire , Ricardo A. Daziano , Taha H. Rashidi

Variational Bayes (VB) is a critical method in machine learning and statistics, underpinning the recent success of Bayesian deep learning. The natural gradient is an essential component of efficient VB estimation, but it is prohibitively…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-06-22 Anna Lopatnikova , Minh-Ngoc Tran

Inverse problems aim to determine model parameters of a mathematical problem from given observational data. Neural networks can provide an efficient tool to solve these problems. In the context of Bayesian inverse problems, Uncertainty…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-09-16 Andrea Tonini , Tan Bui-Thanh , Francesco Regazzoni , Luca Dede' , Alfio Quarteroni

Variational Bayes (VB) inference algorithm is used widely to estimate both the parameters and the unobserved hidden variables in generative statistical models. The algorithm -- inspired by variational methods used in computational physics…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-07-27 Hideyuki Miyahara , Vwani Roychowdhury

The multinomial probit model is often used to analyze choice behaviour. However, estimation with existing Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods is computationally costly, which limits its applicability to large choice data sets. This…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-10-18 Rubén Loaiza-Maya , Didier Nibbering

This paper establishes the asymptotic consistency of the {\it loss-calibrated variational Bayes} (LCVB) method. LCVB was proposed in~\cite{LaSiGh2011} as a method for approximately computing Bayesian posteriors in a `loss aware' manner.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-11-05 Prateek Jaiswal , Harsha Honnappa , Vinayak A. Rao

Variational Bayes (VB) provides a computationally efficient alternative to Markov Chain Monte Carlo, especially for high-dimensional and large-scale inference. However, existing theory on VB primarily focuses on fixed-dimensional settings…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-08-05 Jiawei Yan , Peirong Xu , Tao Wang

We propose a family of variational approximations to Bayesian posterior distributions, called $\alpha$-VB, with provable statistical guarantees. The standard variational approximation is a special case of $\alpha$-VB with $\alpha=1$. When…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2018-02-09 Yun Yang , Debdeep Pati , Anirban Bhattacharya

Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) hold great promise as a flexible and principled solution to deal with uncertainty when learning from finite data. Among approaches to realize probabilistic inference in deep neural networks, variational Bayes…

Variational Bayes (VB) is a popular tool for Bayesian inference in statistical modeling. Recently, some VB algorithms are proposed to handle intractable likelihoods with applications such as approximate Bayesian computation. In this paper,…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-09-28 Zhijian He , Zhenghang Xu , Xiaoqun Wang

The mean field variational Bayes (VB) algorithm implemented in Stan is relatively fast and efficient, making it feasible to produce model-estimated official statistics on a rapid timeline. Yet, while consistent point estimates of parameters…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-07-08 Terrance D. Savitsky , Julie Gershunskaya