Related papers: Stochastic Attribute-Value Grammars
We define a class of probabilistic models in terms of an operator algebra of stochastic processes, and a representation for this class in terms of stochastic parameterized grammars. A syntactic specification of a grammar is mapped to…
To mitigate the problem of having to traverse over the full vocabulary in the softmax normalization of a neural language model, sampling-based training criteria are proposed and investigated in the context of large vocabulary word-based…
An important challenge in machine translation (MT) is to generate high-quality and diverse translations. Prior work has shown that the estimated likelihood from the MT model correlates poorly with translation quality. In contrast, quality…
Implicit sampling is a weighted sampling method that is used in data assimilation, where one sequentially updates estimates of the state of a stochastic model based on a stream of noisy or incomplete data. Here we describe how to use…
Stochastic processes offer a flexible mathematical formalism to model and reason about systems. Most analysis tools, however, start from the premises that models are fully specified, so that any parameters controlling the system's dynamics…
We propose a theoretical framework for thinking about score normalization, which confirms that normalization is not needed under (admittedly fragile) ideal conditions. If, however, these conditions are not met, e.g. under data-set shift…
Latent variable models have been playing a central role in psychometrics and related fields. In many modern applications, the inference based on latent variable models involves one or several of the following features: (1) the presence of…
Stochastic gradient methods enable learning probabilistic models from large amounts of data. While large step-sizes (learning rates) have shown to be best for least-squares (e.g., Gaussian noise) once combined with parameter averaging,…
Two canonical problems in geostatistics are estimating the parameters in a specified family of stochastic process models and predicting the process at new locations. A number of asymptotic results addressing these problems over a fixed…
Many randomized approximation algorithms operate by giving a procedure for simulating a random variable $X$ which has mean $\mu$ equal to the target answer, and a relative standard deviation bounded above by a known constant $c$. Examples…
We present a two-stage Metropolis-Hastings algorithm for sampling probabilistic models, whose log-likelihood is computationally expensive to evaluate, by using a surrogate Gaussian Process (GP) model. The key feature of the approach, and…
This paper presents a model-based, unsupervised algorithm for recovering word boundaries in a natural-language text from which they have been deleted. The algorithm is derived from a probability model of the source that generated the text.…
Estimation and inference on causal parameters is typically reduced to a generalized method of moments problem, which involves auxiliary functions that correspond to solutions to a regression or classification problem. Recent line of work on…
After presenting a novel O(n^3) parsing algorithm for dependency grammar, we develop three contrasting ways to stochasticize it. We propose (a) a lexical affinity model where words struggle to modify each other, (b) a sense tagging model…
Maximizing the likelihood has been widely used for estimating the unknown covariance parameters of spatial Gaussian processes. However, evaluating and optimizing the likelihood function can be computationally intractable, particularly for…
The interpretation of cosmological observables requires the use of increasingly sophisticated theoretical models. Since these models are becoming computationally very expensive and display non-trivial uncertainties, the use of standard…
We present the first study of non-deterministic weighted automata under probabilistic semantics. In this semantics words are random events, generated by a Markov chain, and functions computed by weighted automata are random variables. We…
Synchronous languages are now a standard industry tool for critical embedded systems. Designers write high-level specifications by composing streams of values using block diagrams. These languages have been extended with Bayesian reasoning…
This paper addresses the estimation of locally stationary long-range dependent processes, a methodology that allows the statistical analysis of time series data exhibiting both nonstationarity and strong dependency. A time-varying…
For complex latent variable models, the likelihood function is not available in closed form. In this context, a popular method to perform parameter estimation is Importance Weighted Variational Inference. It essentially maximizes the…