Due to the intractable partition function, the exact likelihood function for a Markov random field (MRF), in many situations, can only be approximated. Major approximation approaches include pseudolikelihood and Laplace approximation. In this paper, we propose a novel way of approximating the likelihood function throug…
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48 results for “Approximate Marginal Likelihood”
Improves hyperparameter learning in GP models with non-conjugate likelihoods.
problem Hyperparameter learning entangled with approximate inference in GP models.
method Hybrid training procedure combining VI for inference and EP-like marginal likelihood approximation for hyperparameter learning.
result Empirically demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed training procedure across various data sets.
Bayesian approach learns invariances from data alone, but last layer approximation is not always sufficient.
problem Learning invariances in neural networks using only training data.
method Bayesian marginal likelihood for last layer, custom optimisation routine, new lower bound.
result Partial success on standard benchmarks and medical imaging dataset, failure on CIFAR10.
We present and implement two algorithms for analytic asymptotic evaluation of the marginal likelihood of data given a Bayesian network with hidden nodes. As shown by previous work, this evaluation is particularly hard for latent Bayesian network models, namely networks that include hidden variables, where asymptotic ap…
Improving the Accuracy of Marginal Approximations in Likelihood-Free Inference via Localisationstat.ME
Improved likelihood-free inference by localizing and refining low-dimensional approximations.
problem Poor performance of common likelihood-free methods in high-dimensional models.
method Localisation followed by refinement of low-dimensional summaries.
result Improved accuracy in marginal posteriors through localized and refined approximations.
Deep Gaussian processes provide a flexible approach to probabilistic modelling of data using either supervised or unsupervised learning. For tractable inference approximations to the marginal likelihood of the model must be made. The original approach to approximate inference in these models used variational compressio…
Improves Gaussian process regression without bias.
problem Bias in Gaussian process regression estimates.
method Adaptive computation selection to minimize bias.
result Guaranteed small bias in log marginal likelihood estimates.
New method estimates marginal likelihood for deep learning models using training data alone.
problem Estimation difficulties in marginal likelihood for model selection in deep learning.
method Scalable marginal likelihood estimation based on Laplace's method and Gauss-Newton approximations.
result Estimate outperforms cross-validation and manual tuning on various datasets.
Stochastic Gradient Annealed Importance Sampling for Efficient Online Marginal Likelihood Estimationstat.ML
We consider estimating the marginal likelihood in settings with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) data. We propose estimating the predictive distributions in a sequential factorization of the marginal likelihood in such settings by using stochastic gradient Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques. This appro…
Bayesian inference in the presence of an intractable likelihood function is computationally challenging. When following a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach to approximate the posterior distribution in this context, one typically either uses MCMC schemes which target the joint posterior of the parameters and some…
We consider the combined use of resampling and partial rejection control in sequential Monte Carlo methods, also known as particle filters. While the variance reducing properties of rejection control are known, there has not been (to the best of our knowledge) any work on unbiased estimation of the marginal likelihood …
Bayesian approach sparsifies neural networks efficiently.
problem Efficiently pruning neural networks to save resources.
method Sparsifiability via the Marginal likelihood (SpaM) framework.
result Prunes neural networks effectively without significant loss in performance.
Improved Gaussian process regression with tighter log marginal likelihood bounds.
problem Improving predictive performance in Gaussian process regression models.
method Lower bound on log marginal likelihood using conjugate gradients.
result Improved predictive performance compared to other conjugate gradient based approaches.
A fast method estimates group-adaptive elastic net penalties using co-data.
problem Computational inefficiency in estimating group-adaptive elastic net penalties.
method Derive low-dimensional representation of Taylor approximation for marginal likelihood and its derivative for group-adaptive ridge penalties; approximate elastic net marginal likelihood by ridge; transform ridge penalties to elastic net penalties.
result Significantly decreases computation time and outperforms other methods.
Efficient Approximations for the Marginal Likelihood of Incomplete Data Given a Bayesian Networkcs.LG
We discuss Bayesian methods for learning Bayesian networks when data sets are incomplete. In particular, we examine asymptotic approximations for the marginal likelihood of incomplete data given a Bayesian network. We consider the Laplace approximation and the less accurate but more efficient BIC/MDL approximation. We …
Combines VI and EP for better Gaussian process hyperparameter learning.
problem Improving hyperparameter learning in Gaussian processes for better performance.
method Hybrid training procedure combining Variational Inference (VI) for posterior inference and Expectation Propagation (EP) for hyperparameter learning.
result The hybrid training procedure provides a better learning objective and generalizes better than using only VI or EP.
AIS uses a suboptimal extended target distribution, which this paper improves using SGM.
problem Improving the efficiency of Annealed Importance Sampling for marginal likelihood estimation.
method Leveraging score-based generative modeling to approximate the optimal extended target distribution.
result Demonstrated novel, differentiable AIS procedures on synthetic and real-world data.
Neural models improve GLMMs for complex data.
problem Nonlinear relationships in grouped data.
method Replaced linear function with neural networks.
result Improved performance on synthetic and real-world data.
Warm starts improve Gaussian process regression by up to 16x.
problem Optimizing hyperparameters for Gaussian processes.
method Iterative Gaussian processes with warm start optimization.
result Warm starts achieve the same results as conventional methods but significantly speed up computations.
Graphical models trained using maximum likelihood are a common tool for probabilistic inference of marginal distributions. However, this approach suffers difficulties when either the inference process or the model is approximate. In this paper, the inference process is first defined to be the minimization of a convex f…
Proposes a more efficient knot selection method for sparse Gaussian processes.
problem Optimizing marginal likelihood for knot selection leads to suboptimal and inefficient placement of knots.
method Uses Bayesian optimization to propose knots one at a time, avoiding multimodal surface issues.
result Improves both accuracy and speed of knot selection compared to current methods.
A new method estimates marginal likelihood using normalizing flows.
problem Estimating marginal likelihood in Bayesian model selection.
method Learned harmonic mean estimator using normalizing flows.
result Normalizing flows avoid the exploding variance problem.
In this paper, we introduce a new form of amortized variational inference by using the forward KL divergence in a joint-contrastive variational loss. The resulting forward amortized variational inference is a likelihood-free method as its gradient can be sampled without bias and without requiring any evaluation of eith…
New method optimizes hyperparameters in deep learning models efficiently.
problem Manual hyperparameter tuning in deep learning models is inefficient and requires expertise.
method Introduces lower bounds to the linearized Laplace approximation of the marginal likelihood using neural tangent kernels.
result Optimization of hyperparameters can be significantly accelerated using the method.
Bayesian Learning of Conditional Kernel Mean Embeddings for Automatic Likelihood-Free Inferencestat.ML
In likelihood-free settings where likelihood evaluations are intractable, approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) addresses the formidable inference task to discover plausible parameters of simulation programs that explain the observations. However, they demand large quantities of simulation calls. Critically, hyperpara…
Temporal Point Processes (TPP) with partial likelihoods involving a latent structure often entail an intractable marginalization, thus making inference hard. We propose a novel approach to Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) involving approximate inference over the latent variables by minimizing a tight upper bound on …
We address the problem of learning the parameters in graphical models when inference is intractable. A common strategy in this case is to replace the partition function with its Bethe approximation. We show that there exists a regime of empirical marginals where such Bethe learning will fail. By failure we mean that th…
Posterior inference with an intractable likelihood is becoming an increasingly common task in scientific domains which rely on sophisticated computer simulations. Typically, these forward models do not admit tractable densities forcing practitioners to make use of approximations. This work introduces a novel approach t…
Estimates log marginal likelihood using multilevel Monte Carlo.
problem Estimating log marginal likelihood accurately.
method Unbiased multilevel Monte Carlo estimator.
result Validates application in variational Bayes.
Computing the marginal likelihood (ML) of a model requires marginalizing out all of the parameters and latent variables, a difficult high-dimensional summation or integration problem. To make matters worse, it is often hard to measure the accuracy of one's ML estimates. We present bidirectional Monte Carlo, a technique…
Improved GP decoder training with SAS approximations.
problem Training expensive Gaussian process decoders is challenging and computationally expensive.
method Developed a new stochastic estimate of log-marginal likelihood based on cross-validation.
result SAS-GP improves robustness and reduces computational cost compared to variational autoencoders.
Bayesian evidence helps compare models but can overfit.
problem Comparing hypotheses consistent with observations.
method Marginal likelihood, Occam's razor, PAC-Bayes bounds.
result Marginal likelihood can negatively correlate with generalization.
New SMC samplers improve stochastic optimisation efficiency.
problem Optimizing functions with intractable gradients in machine learning and statistics.
method Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) samplers for stochastic optimisation.
result Significant computational gains achieved with SMC approximations.
Given a set of possible models (e.g., Bayesian network structures) and a data sample, in the unsupervised model selection problem the task is to choose the most accurate model with respect to the domain joint probability distribution. In contrast to this, in supervised model selection it is a priori known that the chos…
JANA trains networks to approximate Bayesian models efficiently.
problem Intractable likelihood functions and posterior densities in Bayesian models.
method End-to-end training of three networks: summary, posterior, and likelihood networks.
result JANA provides accurate amortized marginal likelihood and posterior predictive estimation.
We propose a Bayesian approximate inference method for learning the dependence structure of a Gaussian graphical model. Using pseudo-likelihood, we derive an analytical expression to approximate the marginal likelihood for an arbitrary graph structure without invoking any assumptions about decomposability. The majority…
Given a set of possible models (e.g., Bayesian network structures) and a data sample, in the unsupervised model selection problem the task is to choose the most accurate model with respect to the domain joint probability distribution. In contrast to this, in supervised model selection it is a priori known that the chos…
New method resolves nonidentifiability in mixture models.
problem Nonidentifiability in marginal models of mixture models.
method Introducing an effective temperature to generalize the marginal likelihood.
result Maximization of the generalized likelihood leads to unique results.
A new MCMC method for GPs tackles computational burden and intractable likelihoods.
problem High computational burden and intractable likelihoods in Gaussian process models.
method Combines variationally sparse Gaussian processes with pseudo-marginal MCMC.
result Asymptotically exact inference with computational gains for large datasets.
Gaussian processes have been successful in both supervised and unsupervised machine learning tasks, but their computational complexity has constrained practical applications. We introduce a new approximation for large-scale Gaussian processes, the Gaussian Process Random Field (GPRF), in which local GPs are coupled via…
DMVI uses diffusion models for efficient probabilistic inference in PPLs.
problem Efficient probabilistic inference in complex probabilistic programming languages.
method DMVI employs diffusion models as variational approximations to the posterior distribution, optimizing a bound on the marginal likelihood.
result DMVI produces more accurate posterior inferences than existing methods in PPLs with similar computational cost and less manual tuning.
Variational Prediction simplifies Bayesian inference without test time costs.
problem Bayesian inference's computational costs and posterior predictive distribution marginalization.
method Variational Prediction learns a variational approximation to the posterior predictive distribution using a variational bound.
result Directly learns a variational approximation to the posterior predictive distribution without test time marginalization costs.
A scalable method for estimating spatial data using VREML.
problem Costly computation of REML for large, sparse precision matrices in spatial data.
method Proposes VREML framework approximating marginal likelihood with Gaussian variational distribution and deriving a coordinate-ascent algorithm.
result Empirically shows VREML outperforms MLE and INLA.
New method controls error in low-dimensional marginals of spatial models.
problem Inaccurate approximation of low-dimensional marginals in spatial models.
method Stein's method with δ-locality condition for spatial models.
result Uniform error bound for marginals of approximate distributions.
Bayesian inference in state-space models is challenging due to high-dimensional state trajectories. A viable approach is particle Markov chain Monte Carlo, combining MCMC and sequential Monte Carlo to form "exact approximations" to otherwise intractable MCMC methods. The performance of the approximation is limited to t…
Robust GP model detects and corrects sparse outliers.
problem Non-Gaussian noise in real-world data.
method Relevance pursuit for data-point-specific noise levels.
result Strong concavity and approximation guarantees for subset selection.
Training deep generative models with maximum likelihood remains a challenge. The typical workaround is to use variational inference (VI) and maximize a lower bound to the log marginal likelihood of the data. Variational auto-encoders (VAEs) adopt this approach. They further amortize the cost of inference by using a rec…
A Bayesian GED-Gamma stochastic volatility model for return data: a marginal likelihood approachq-fin.ST
Several studies explore inferences based on stochastic volatility (SV) models, taking into account the stylized facts of return data. The common problem is that the latent parameters of many volatility models are high-dimensional and analytically intractable, which means inferences require approximations using, for exa…