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We introduce $\textit{Stein transport}$, a novel methodology for Bayesian inference designed to efficiently push an ensemble of particles along a predefined curve of tempered probability distributions. The driving vector field is chosen…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-12-02 Nikolas Nüsken

In this paper, we approach the problem of optimizing blackbox functions over large hybrid search spaces consisting of both combinatorial and continuous parameters. We demonstrate that previous evolutionary algorithms which rely on…

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

Bayesian optimization (BO) has shown impressive results in a variety of applications within low-to-moderate dimensional Euclidean spaces. However, extending BO to high-dimensional settings remains a significant challenge. We address this…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-03-11 Shouri Hu , Jiawei Li , Zhibo Cai

The black-box adversarial attack has attracted impressive attention for its practical use in the field of deep learning security. Meanwhile, it is very challenging as there is no access to the network architecture or internal weights of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-26 Yifeng Xiong , Jiadong Lin , Min Zhang , John E. Hopcroft , Kun He

Zeroth-order optimization (ZO) has been a powerful framework for solving black-box problems, which estimates gradients using zeroth-order data to update variables iteratively. The practical applicability of ZO critically depends on the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-03 Ruiyang Jin , Yuke Zhou , Yujie Tang , Jie Song , Siyang Gao

Decision-based methods have shown to be effective in black-box adversarial attacks, as they can obtain satisfactory performance and only require to access the final model prediction. Gradient estimation is a critical step in black-box…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-31 Han Liu , Xingshuo Huang , Xiaotong Zhang , Qimai Li , Fenglong Ma , Wei Wang , Hongyang Chen , Hong Yu , Xianchao Zhang

We propose a simple algorithm to train stochastic neural networks to draw samples from given target distributions for probabilistic inference. Our method is based on iteratively adjusting the neural network parameters so that the output…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-11-01 Yihao Feng , Dilin Wang , Qiang Liu

Random embedding has been applied with empirical success to large-scale black-box optimization problems with low effective dimensions. This paper proposes the EmbeddedHunter algorithm, which incorporates the technique in a hierarchical…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-11-29 Abdullah Al-Dujaili , S. Suresh

Expensive multi-objective optimization problems (EMOPs) are common in real-world scenarios where evaluating objective functions is costly and involves extensive computations or physical experiments. Current Pareto set learning methods for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-18 Minh-Duc Nguyen , Phuong Mai Dinh , Quang-Huy Nguyen , Long P. Hoang , Dung D. Le

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

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a non-parametric inference algorithm that evolves a set of particles to fit a given distribution of interest. We analyze the non-asymptotic properties of SVGD, showing that there exists a set of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-10-30 Qiang Liu , Dilin Wang

High dimensional parameter space optimization is crucial in many applications. The parameters affecting this performance can be both numerical and categorical in their type. The existing techniques of black-box optimization and visual…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2022-05-02 Anjul Tyagi

Bilevel optimization is a field of significant theoretical and practical interest, yet solving such optimization problems remains challenging. Evolutionary methods have been employed to address these problems in the black-box setting;…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2026-04-06 Marc Ong , Youhei Akimoto

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a prominent particle-based variational inference method used for sampling a target distribution. SVGD has attracted interest for application in machine-learning techniques such as Bayesian…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-26 Yuya Kawamura , Satoshi Takabe

Black-box optimization problems often require simultaneously optimizing different types of variables, such as continuous, integer, and categorical variables. Unlike integer variables, categorical variables do not necessarily have a…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2025-05-22 Ryoki Hamano , Shota Saito , Masahiro Nomura , Kento Uchida , Shinichi Shirakawa

Black-box optimization is often encountered for decision-making in complex systems management, where the knowledge of system is limited. Under these circumstances, it is essential to balance the utilization of new information with…

Computation · Statistics 2025-01-15 Teng Lian , Jian-Qiang Hu , Yuhang Wu , Zeyu Zheng

In this paper, we propose an infinite-dimensional version of the Stein variational gradient descent (iSVGD) method for solving Bayesian inverse problems. The method can generate approximate samples from posteriors efficiently. Based on the…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-02-09 Junxiong Jia , Peijun Li , Deyu Meng

A number of optimization approaches have been proposed for optimizing nonconvex objectives (e.g. deep learning models), such as batch gradient descent, stochastic gradient descent and stochastic variance reduced gradient descent. Theory…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-15 Jia Bi , Steve R. Gunn

We propose randomized subspace gradient methods for high-dimensional constrained optimization. While there have been similarly purposed studies on unconstrained optimization problems, there have been few on constrained optimization problems…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-10 Ryota Nozawa , Pierre-Louis Poirion , Akiko Takeda