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Bayesian model selection enables comparison and ranking of conceptual subsurface models described by spatial prior models, according to the support provided by available geophysical data. Deep generative neural networks can efficiently…

Geophysics · Physics 2021-05-19 M. Amaya , N. Linde , E. Laloy

Deep Gaussian Processes (DGPs) are hierarchical generalizations of Gaussian Processes that combine well calibrated uncertainty estimates with the high flexibility of multilayer models. One of the biggest challenges with these models is that…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-11-13 Marton Havasi , José Miguel Hernández-Lobato , Juan José Murillo-Fuentes

This paper introduces a Bayesian framework that combines Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling, dimensionality reduction, and neural density estimation to efficiently handle inverse problems that (i) must be solved multiple times, and…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2026-02-24 Giacomo Bottacini , Matteo Torzoni , Andrea Manzoni

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…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-10-31 Tianle Liu , Promit Ghosal , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Natesh S. Pillai

A conventional Bayesian approach to prediction uses the posterior distribution to integrate out parameters in a density for unobserved data conditional on the observed data and parameters. When the true posterior is intractable, it is…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-27 Lucas Kock , Scott A. Sisson , G. S. Rodrigues , David J. Nott

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) refers to a class of methods for Bayesian inference based on interacting particle systems. In this paper, we consider the originally proposed deterministic dynamics as well as a stochastic variant,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-26 Nikolas Nüsken , D. R. Michiel Renger

Most applications of Bayesian Inference for parameter estimation and model selection in astrophysics involve the use of Monte Carlo techniques such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and nested sampling. However, these techniques are time…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2022-01-26 Geetakrishnasai Gunapati , Anirudh Jain , P. K. Srijith , Shantanu Desai

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-06 Daniel Ward , Mark Beaumont , Matteo Fasiolo

Sample-based Bayesian inference provides a route to uncertainty quantification in the geosciences, and inverse problems in general, though is very computationally demanding in the naive form that requires simulating an accurate computer…

Computation · Statistics 2019-04-12 Tiangang Cui , Colin Fox , Michael J O'Sullivan

Along with Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, variational inference (VI) has emerged as a central computational approach to large-scale Bayesian inference. Rather than sampling from the true posterior $\pi$, VI aims at producing a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-04-24 Marc Lambert , Sinho Chewi , Francis Bach , Silvère Bonnabel , Philippe Rigollet

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) [Liu and Wang, 2016] performs approximate Bayesian inference by representing the posterior with a set of particles. However, SVGD suffers from variance collapse, i.e. poor predictions due to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-27 Ola Rønning , Eric Nalisnick , Christophe Ley , Padhraic Smyth , Thomas Hamelryck

Time-lapse seismic full-waveform inversion (FWI) provides estimates of dynamic changes in the subsurface by performing multiple seismic surveys at different times. Since FWI problems are highly non-linear and non-unique, it is important to…

Geophysics · Physics 2023-08-21 Xin Zhang , Andrew Curtis

Stokes inversion techniques are very powerful methods for obtaining information on the thermodynamic and magnetic properties of solar and stellar atmospheres. In recent years, very sophisticated inversion codes have been developed that are…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2022-03-23 C. J. Díaz Baso , A. Asensio Ramos , J. de la Cruz Rodríguez

We propose a novel particle-based variational inference method designed to work with multimodal distributions. Our approach, referred to as Branched Stein Variational Gradient Descent (BSVGD), extends the classical Stein Variational…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-18 Isaías Bañales , Arturo Jaramillo , Joshué Helí Ricalde-Guerrero

We consider the problem of Bayesian parameter estimation for deep neural networks, which is important in problem settings where we may have little data, and/ or where we need accurate posterior predictive densities, e.g., for applications…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-11-10 Anoop Korattikara , Vivek Rathod , Kevin Murphy , Max Welling

Many machine learning problems involve Monte Carlo gradient estimators. As a prominent example, we focus on Monte Carlo variational inference (MCVI) in this paper. The performance of MCVI crucially depends on the variance of its stochastic…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-07-05 Alexander Buchholz , Florian Wenzel , Stephan Mandt

Monte Carlo sampling for Bayesian posterior inference is a common approach used in machine learning. The Markov Chain Monte Carlo procedures that are used are often discrete-time analogues of associated stochastic differential equations…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-02-14 Xiaocheng Shang , Zhanxing Zhu , Benedict Leimkuhler , Amos J. Storkey

Spatially varying coefficients (SVC) models allow for marginal effects to be non-stationary over space and thus offer a higher degree of flexibility with respect to standard geostatistical models with external drift. At the same time, SVC…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-11-27 Yacine Mohamed Idir , Thomas Romary

Stochastic differential equations (SDEs) or diffusions are continuous-valued continuous-time stochastic processes widely used in the applied and mathematical sciences. Simulating paths from these processes is usually an intractable problem,…

Computation · Statistics 2020-05-27 Qi Wang , Vinayak Rao , Yee Whye Teh

Bayesian computation plays an important role in modern machine learning and statistics to reason about uncertainty. A key computational challenge in Bayesian inference is to develop efficient techniques to approximate, or draw samples from…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-09-01 Liang Yan , Tao Zhou