arXiv research

We would like to congratulate the authors of "A Bayesian Conjugate Gradient Method" on their insightful paper, and welcome this publication which we firmly believe will become a fundamental contribution to the growing field of probabilistic numerical methods and in particular the sub-field of Bayesian numerical methods…

The paper deals with learning probability distributions of observed data by artificial neural networks. We suggest a so-called gradient conjugate prior (GCP) update appropriate for neural networks, which is a modification of the classical Bayesian update for conjugate priors. We establish a connection between the gradi…

BONG optimizes Bayesian inference online with natural gradient descent.

Proves FR-NGD optimally approximates evolutionary dynamics and continuous Bayesian inference.

New method tackles high-dimensional SBL without covariance matrices.

A method uses CG to create efficient channels for ideal observers.

New method improves calibration of BayesCG for better uncertainty quantification.

The stochastic variational inference (SVI) paradigm, which combines variational inference, natural gradients, and stochastic updates, was recently proposed for large-scale data analysis in conjugate Bayesian models and demonstrated to be effective in several problems. This paper studies a family of Bayesian latent vari…

Warm-start strategies speed up GP inference by 19x.

Researchers compare different gradient methods for ridge regression, finding conjugate gradients have similar performance.

We characterize conjugate nonparametric Bayesian models as projective limits of conjugate, finite-dimensional Bayesian models. In particular, we identify a large class of nonparametric models representable as infinite-dimensional analogues of exponential family distributions and their canonical conjugate priors. This c…

ADASAP accelerates GP inference for large datasets.

A conjugate Bayesian method detects change points in Hawkes processes efficiently.

The natural gradient method has been used effectively in conjugate Gaussian process models, but the non-conjugate case has been largely unexplored. We examine how natural gradients can be used in non-conjugate stochastic settings, together with hyperparameter learning. We conclude that the natural gradient can signific…

We derive and approximate the conjugate prior of Dirichlet and beta distributions.

Noise-aware DP inference improves accuracy for complex models.

Paper introduces robust Gaussian process regression without sacrificing computational efficiency.

We address the challenge of effective exploration while maintaining good performance in policy gradient methods. As a solution, we propose diverse exploration (DE) via conjugate policies. DE learns and deploys a set of conjugate policies which can be conveniently generated as a byproduct of conjugate gradient descent. …

The study proves triviality and rigidity results for Ricci solitons and estimates their conjugate radius.

Bayesian model predicts oncology demand trends with high accuracy.

NCG methods improve shape optimization efficiency.

Optimization with noisy gradients has become ubiquitous in statistics and machine learning. Reparameterization gradients, or gradient estimates computed via the "reparameterization trick," represent a class of noisy gradients often used in Monte Carlo variational inference (MCVI). However, when these gradient estimator…

Stochastic gradient descent improves Gaussian process regression.

Harmonic functions of two variables are exactly those that admit a conjugate, namely a function whose gradient has the same length and is everywhere orthogonal to the gradient of the original function. We show that there are also partial differential equations controlling the functions of three variables that admit a c…

Two novel distributed VB algorithms improve Bayesian inference in sensor networks.

Making inferences from data streams is a pervasive problem in many modern data analysis applications. But it requires to address the problem of continuous model updating and adapt to changes or drifts in the underlying data generating distribution. In this paper, we approach these problems from a Bayesian perspective c…

A new method speeds up deep neural network training.

This paper speeds up iterative GP inference with warm starting.

Continuous latent time series models are prevalent in Bayesian modeling; examples include the Kalman filter, dynamic collaborative filtering, or dynamic topic models. These models often benefit from structured, non mean field variational approximations that capture correlations between time steps. Black box variational…

Many computationally-efficient methods for Bayesian deep learning rely on continuous optimization algorithms, but the implementation of these methods requires significant changes to existing code-bases. In this paper, we propose Vprop, a method for Gaussian variational inference that can be implemented with two minor c…

The computational and storage complexity of kernel machines presents the primary barrier to their scaling to large, modern, datasets. A common way to tackle the scalability issue is to use the conjugate gradient algorithm, which relieves the constraints on both storage (the kernel matrix need not be stored) and computa…

Improved Gaussian process regression with tighter log marginal likelihood bounds.

Develops multi-modal neural network models for improved prediction and uncertainty quantification.

This note provides a novel, simple analysis of the method of conjugate gradients for the minimization of convex quadratic functions. In contrast with standard arguments, our proof is entirely self-contained and does not rely on the existence of Chebyshev polynomials. Another advantage of our development is that it clar…

A scalable Bayesian linear regression framework for spatial data.

Conjugate pairs of distributions over infinite dimensional spaces are prominent in statistical learning theory, particularly due to the widespread adoption of Bayesian nonparametric methodologies for a host of models and applications. Much of the existing literature in the learning community focuses on processes posses…

We develop methods for efficient amortized approximate Bayesian inference over posterior distributions of probabilistic clustering models, such as Dirichlet process mixture models. The approach is based on mapping distributed, symmetry-invariant representations of cluster arrangements into conditional probabilities. Th…

This manuscript proposes a probabilistic framework for algorithms that iteratively solve unconstrained linear problems $Bx = b$ with positive definite $B$ for $x$. The goal is to replace the point estimates returned by existing methods with a Gaussian posterior belief over the elements of the inverse of $B$, which can …

Mean-field variational inference is a method for approximate Bayesian posterior inference. It approximates a full posterior distribution with a factorized set of distributions by maximizing a lower bound on the marginal likelihood. This requires the ability to integrate a sum of terms in the log joint likelihood using …

Nonlinear conjugate gradient (NLCG) based optimizers have shown superior loss convergence properties compared to gradient descent based optimizers for traditional optimization problems. However, in Deep Neural Network (DNN) training, the dominant optimization algorithm of choice is still Stochastic Gradient Descent (SG…

Unified approach to Bayesian inference with guarantees on covariance matrices.

Applied Data Scientists throughout various industries are commonly faced with the challenging task of encoding high-cardinality categorical features into digestible inputs for machine learning algorithms. This paper describes a Bayesian encoding technique developed for WeWork's lead scoring engine which outputs the pro…

New conjugate priors improve Bayesian inference for multinomial probit models.

In a modern observational study based on healthcare databases, the number of observations and of predictors typically range in the order of $10^5$ ~ $10^6$ and of $10^4$ ~ $10^5$. Despite the large sample size, data rarely provide sufficient information to reliably estimate such a large number of parameters. Sparse reg…

Conjugate gradient methods improve efficiency for high-dimensional GLMMs.

Study on Metropolis-within-Gibbs schemes for high-dimensional Bayesian models.

Bayesian model uses simple functions to forecast macroeconomic data.

Enhances Bayesian model comparison with a probabilistic framework for meta-uncertainty.