Related papers: Variational inference via Gaussian interacting par…

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…

Derivative-free optimization has become an important technique used in machine learning for optimizing black-box models. To conduct updates without explicitly computing gradient, most current approaches iteratively sample a random search…

Selecting powerful predictors for an outcome is a cornerstone task for machine learning. However, some types of questions can only be answered by identifying the predictors that causally affect the outcome. A recent approach to this causal…

Optimal Transport has received much attention in Machine Learning as it allows to compare probability distributions by exploiting the geometry of the underlying space. However, in its original formulation, solving this problem suffers from…

In this brief note, it is shown that the Bures-Wasserstein (BW) metric on the space positive definite matrices lends itself to convex optimization. In other words, the computation of the BW metric can be posed as a convex optimization…

In deterministic optimization, line searches are a standard tool ensuring stability and efficiency. Where only stochastic gradients are available, no direct equivalent has so far been formulated, because uncertain gradients do not allow for…

In deterministic optimization, line searches are a standard tool ensuring stability and efficiency. Where only stochastic gradients are available, no direct equivalent has so far been formulated, because uncertain gradients do not allow for…

Several fundamental problems in science and engineering consist of global optimization tasks involving unknown high-dimensional (black-box) functions that map a set of controllable variables to the outcomes of an expensive experiment.…

In this paper we propose a variant of a consensus-based global optimization (CBO) method that uses personal best information in order to compute the global minimum of a non-convex, locally Lipschitz continuous function. The proposed…

Variational inference (VI) is a popular approach in Bayesian inference, that looks for the best approximation of the posterior distribution within a parametric family, minimizing a loss that is typically the (reverse) Kullback-Leibler (KL)…

We consider the problem of estimating the parameters of a Gaussian or binary distribution in such a way that the resulting undirected graphical model is sparse. Our approach is to solve a maximum likelihood problem with an added l_1-norm…

Feature alignment methods are used in many scientific disciplines for data pooling, annotation, and comparison. As an instance of a permutation learning problem, feature alignment presents significant statistical and computational…

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…

We introduce a method combining variational autoencoders (VAEs) and deep metric learning to perform Bayesian optimisation (BO) over high-dimensional and structured input spaces. By adapting ideas from deep metric learning, we use label…

Gaussian and discrete non-Gaussian spatial datasets are common across fields like public health, ecology, geosciences, and social sciences. Bayesian spatial generalized linear mixed models (SGLMMs) are a flexible class of models for…

This paper introduces and develops novel coderivative-based Newton methods with Wolfe linesearch conditions to solve various classes of problems in nonsmooth optimization. We first propose a generalized regularized Newton method with Wolfe…

A novel multiscale consensus-based optimization (CBO) algorithm for solving bi- and tri-level optimization problems is introduced. Existing CBO techniques are generalized by the proposed method through the employment of multiple interacting…

Optimization problems with uncertain black-box constraints, modeled by warped Gaussian processes, have recently been considered in the Bayesian optimization setting. This work introduces a new class of constraints in which the same…

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…

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a sequential approach for optimizing black-box objective functions using zeroth-order noisy observations. In BO, Gaussian processes (GPs) are employed as probabilistic surrogate models to estimate the objective…