Related papers: Probabilistic Inference and Learning with Stein's …

We introduce a version of Stein's method for proving concentration and moment inequalities in problems with dependence. Simple illustrative examples from combinatorics, physics, and mathematical statistics are provided.

Many Imitation and Reinforcement Learning approaches rely on the availability of expert-generated demonstrations for learning policies or value functions from data. Obtaining a reliable distribution of trajectories from motion planners is…

Gradient-based approximate inference methods, such as Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD), provide simple and general-purpose inference engines for differentiable continuous distributions. However, existing forms of SVGD cannot be…

We build upon recent advances on the distributional aspect of Stein's method to propose a novel and flexible technique for computing Stein operators for random variables that can be written as products of independent random variables. We…

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,…

A stochastic ordering approach is applied with Stein's method for approximation by the equilibrium distribution of a birth-death process. The usual stochastic order and the more general s-convex orders are discussed. Attention is focused on…

This monograph aims at providing an introduction to key concepts, algorithms, and theoretical results in machine learning. The treatment concentrates on probabilistic models for supervised and unsupervised learning problems. It introduces…

We build on the formalism developed in [arXiv:1906.08372v1] to propose new representations of solutions to Stein equations. We provide new uniform and non uniform bounds on these solutions (a.k.a.\ Stein factors). We use these…

Stein's (1972) method is a very general tool for assessing the quality of approximation of the distribution of a random element by another, often simpler, distribution. In applications of Stein's method, one needs to establish a Stein…

Multilevel Stein variational gradient descent is a method for particle-based variational inference that leverages hierarchies of surrogate target distributions with varying costs and fidelity to computationally speed up inference. The…

Stein operators are differential operators which arise within the so-called Stein's method for stochastic approximation. We propose a new mechanism for constructing such operators for arbitrary (continuous or discrete) parametric…

We use Stein's method to obtain bounds on the rate of convergence for a class of statistics in geometric probability obtained as a sum of contributions from Poisson points which are exponentially stabilizing, i.e. locally determined in a…

This paper is a short exposition of Stein's method of normal approximation from my personal perspective. It focuses mainly on the characterization of the normal distribution and the construction of Stein identities. Through examples, it…

The framework of Stein's method for Poisson process approximation is presented from the point of view of Palm theory, which is used to construct Stein identities and define local dependence. A general result (Theorem…

We obtain a Stein characterisation of the distribution of the product of two correlated normal random variables with non-zero means, and more generally the distribution of the sum of independent copies of such random variables. Our Stein…

Stein's method is used to approximate sums of discrete and locally dependent random variables by a centered and symmetric Binomial distribution. Under appropriate smoothness properties of the summands, the same order of accuracy as in the…

Recently there have been increasing interests in learning and inference with implicit distributions (i.e., distributions without tractable densities). To this end, we develop a gradient estimator for implicit distributions based on Stein's…

We provide an overview of some recent techniques involving the Malliavin calculus of variations and the so-called ``Stein's method'' for the Gaussian approximations of probability distributions. Special attention is devoted to establishing…

Rare event simulation and rare event probability estimation are important tasks within the analysis of systems subject to uncertainty and randomness. Simultaneously, accurately estimating rare event probabilities is an inherently difficult…

We present a new method for evaluating and training unnormalized density models. Our approach only requires access to the gradient of the unnormalized model's log-density. We estimate the Stein discrepancy between the data density $p(x)$…