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Related papers: Sobolev Regularized MMD Gradient Flow

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Maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) flows suffer from high computational costs in large scale computations. In this paper, we show that MMD flows with Riesz kernels $K(x,y) = - \|x-y\|^r$, $r \in (0,2)$ have exceptional properties which allow…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-21 Johannes Hertrich , Christian Wald , Fabian Altekrüger , Paul Hagemann

Stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM) methods have become fundamental optimization tools in machine learning, combining the computational efficiency of stochastic gradients with the acceleration benefits of momentum. Despite…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-02 Zimeng Wang , Alp Yurtsever

Several emerging post-Bayesian methods target a probability distribution for which an entropy-regularised variational objective is minimised. This increased flexibility introduces a computational challenge, as one loses access to an…

Computation · Statistics 2025-12-17 Clémentine Chazal , Heishiro Kanagawa , Zheyang Shen , Anna Korba , Chris. J. Oates

We propose a new approach to non-parametric density estimation that is based on regularizing a Sobolev norm of the density. This method is statistically consistent, and makes the inductive bias of the model clear and interpretable. While…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-02-15 Mark Kozdoba , Binyamin Perets , Shie Mannor

Sign Gradient Descent (SignGD) is a simple yet robust optimization method, widely used in machine learning for its resilience to gradient noise and compatibility with low-precision computations. While its empirical performance is well…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-27 Valentin Leplat , Sergio Mayorga , Roland Hildebrand , Alexander Gasnikov

Stein discrepancies (SDs) monitor convergence and non-convergence in approximate inference when exact integration and sampling are intractable. However, the computation of a Stein discrepancy can be prohibitive if the Stein operator - often…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-26 Jackson Gorham , Anant Raj , Lester Mackey

The mean-field Langevin dynamics (MFLD) is a nonlinear generalization of the Langevin dynamics that incorporates a distribution-dependent drift, and it naturally arises from the optimization of two-layer neural networks via (noisy) gradient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-13 Taiji Suzuki , Denny Wu , Atsushi Nitanda

In this paper, we present a flow-based method for global optimization of continuous Sobolev functions, called Stein Boltzmann Sampling (SBS). SBS initializes uniformly a number of particles representing candidate solutions, then uses the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-02-21 Gaëtan Serré , Argyris Kalogeratos , Nicolas Vayatis

Commonly used $f$-divergences of measures, e.g., the Kullback-Leibler divergence, are subject to limitations regarding the support of the involved measures. A remedy is regularizing the $f$-divergence by a squared maximum mean discrepancy…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-04-14 Viktor Stein , Sebastian Neumayer , Nicolaj Rux , Gabriele Steidl

Maximum marginal likelihood estimation (MMLE) can be formulated as the optimization of a free energy functional. From this viewpoint, the Expectation-Maximisation (EM) algorithm admits a natural interpretation as a coordinate descent method…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-10 Adam Rozzio , Rafael Athanasiades , O. Deniz Akyildiz

Wasserstein distributionally robust optimization offers a framework for model fitting in machine learning under potential shifts in the data distribution. We study a regularized variant of this problem in which entropic smoothing produces a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-28 Tam Le

Gradient-regularized value learning methods improve sample efficiency by leveraging learned models of transition dynamics and rewards to estimate return gradients. However, existing approaches, such as MAGE, struggle in stochastic or noisy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Baptiste Debes , Tinne Tuytelaars

Approximating a probability distribution using a set of particles is a fundamental problem in machine learning and statistics, with applications including clustering and quantization. Formally, we seek a weighted mixture of Dirac measures…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-24 Ayoub Belhadji , Daniel Sharp , Youssef Marzouk

The stochastic mirror descent (SMD) algorithm is a general class of training algorithms, which includes the celebrated stochastic gradient descent (SGD), as a special case. It utilizes a mirror potential to influence the implicit bias of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-28 Taylan Kargin , Fariborz Salehi , Babak Hassibi

Detecting changes is of fundamental importance when analyzing data streams and has many applications, e.g., in predictive maintenance, fraud detection, or medicine. A principled approach to detect changes is to compare the distributions of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-13 Florian Kalinke , Marco Heyden , Georg Gntuni , Edouard Fouché , Klemens Böhm

Generative models have been successfully used for generating realistic signals. Because the likelihood function is typically intractable in most of these models, the common practice is to use "implicit" models that avoid likelihood…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-07 Itai Alon , Amir Globerson , Ami Wiesel

We consider in this work a system of two stochastic differential equations named the perturbed compositional gradient flow. By introducing a separation of fast and slow scales of the two equations, we show that the limit of the slow motion…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-07-26 Wenqing Hu , Chris Junchi Li

Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a kernel-based particle method for sampling from a target distribution, e.g., in generative modeling and Bayesian inference. SVGD does not require estimating the gradient of the log-density,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-04-10 Viktor Stein , Wuchen Li

Maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) has enjoyed a lot of success in many machine learning and statistical applications, including non-parametric hypothesis testing, because of its ability to handle non-Euclidean data. Recently, it has been…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-01-24 Omar Hagrass , Bharath K. Sriperumbudur , Bing Li

Understanding stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its variants is essential for machine learning. However, most of the preceding analyses are conducted under amenable conditions such as unbiased gradient estimator and bounded objective…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-03-26 Tianyou Li , Fan Chen , Huajie Chen , Zaiwen Wen