相关论文: CATVI: Conditional and Adaptively Truncated Variat…
We revisit the theory of importance weighted variational inference (IWVI), a promising strategy for learning latent variable models. IWVI uses new variational bounds, known as Monte Carlo objectives (MCOs), obtained by replacing intractable…
Current black-box variational inference (BBVI) methods require the user to make numerous design choices -- such as the selection of variational objective and approximating family -- yet there is little principled guidance on how to do so.…
Most leading implementations of black-box variational inference (BBVI) are based on optimizing a stochastic evidence lower bound (ELBO). But such approaches to BBVI often converge slowly due to the high variance of their gradient estimates…
We derive streamlined mean field variational Bayes algorithms for fitting linear mixed models with crossed random effects. In the most general situation, where the dimensions of the crossed groups are arbitrarily large, streamlining is…
The main computational challenge in Bayesian inference is to compute integrals against a high-dimensional posterior distribution. In the past decades, variational inference (VI) has emerged as a tractable approximation to these integrals,…
We exploit the observation that stochastic variational inference (SVI) is a form of annealing and present a modified SVI approach -- applicable to both large and small datasets -- that allows the amount of annealing done by SVI to be tuned.…
Variational quantum algorithms are poised to have significant impact on high-dimensional optimization, with applications in classical combinatorics, quantum chemistry, and condensed matter. Nevertheless, the optimization landscape of these…
In variational inference, the benefits of Bayesian models rely on accurately capturing the true posterior distribution. We propose using neural samplers that specify implicit distributions, which are well-suited for approximating complex…
Variational methods are employed in situations where exact Bayesian inference becomes intractable due to the difficulty in performing certain integrals. Typically, variational methods postulate a tractable posterior and formulate a lower…
Semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI) is introduced to expand the commonly used analytic variational distribution family, by mixing the variational parameter with a flexible distribution. This mixing distribution can assume any density…
We consider the problem of adaptive inference on a regression function at a point under a multivariate nonparametric regression setting. The regression function belongs to a H\"older class and is assumed to be monotone with respect to some…
While Variational Inequality (VI) is a well-established mathematical framework that subsumes Nash equilibrium and saddle-point problems, less is known about its extension, Quasi-Variational Inequalities (QVI). QVI allows for cases where the…
We introduce Support Decomposition Variational Inference (SDVI), a new variational inference (VI) approach for probabilistic programs with stochastic support. Existing approaches to this problem rely on designing a single global variational…
We empirically evaluate a stochastic annealing strategy for Bayesian posterior optimization with variational inference. Variational inference is a deterministic approach to approximate posterior inference in Bayesian models in which a…
Black-box variational inference (BBVI) with Gaussian mixture families offers a flexible approach for approximating complex posterior distributions without requiring gradients of the target density. However, standard numerical optimization…
Bayesian inference provides a natural way of incorporating prior beliefs and assigning a probability measure to the space of hypotheses. Current solutions rely on iterative routines like Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling and…
We present a new algorithm, truncated variance reduction (TruVaR), that treats Bayesian optimization (BO) and level-set estimation (LSE) with Gaussian processes in a unified fashion. The algorithm greedily shrinks a sum of truncated…
Geoscientists use observed data to estimate properties of the Earth's interior. This often requires non-linear inverse problems to be solved and uncertainties to be estimated. Bayesian inference solves inverse problems under a probabilistic…
This paper introduces the $f$-divergence variational inference ($f$-VI) that generalizes variational inference to all $f$-divergences. Initiated from minimizing a crafty surrogate $f$-divergence that shares the statistical consistency with…
Variational Bayesian (VB) methods produce posterior inference in a time frame considerably smaller than traditional Markov Chain Monte Carlo approaches. Although the VB posterior is an approximation, it has been shown to produce good…