Discrete diffusion models improve text and image inference.
problem Challenges in posterior sampling with discrete diffusion models.
method Anchored Posterior Sampling (APS) with quantized expectation and anchored remasking.
result APS achieves state-of-the-art performance on various tasks.
Develops a new Bayesian inference method for discrete data.
problem Computational challenges in discrete state spaces, especially intractable likelihoods.
method Uses a discrete Fisher divergence to update beliefs about model parameters, circumventing the intractable normalising constant.
result Establishes statistical properties of the generalised posterior and proposes a calibration approach.
Each training step for a variational autoencoder (VAE) requires us to sample from the approximate posterior, so we usually choose simple (e.g. factorised) approximate posteriors in which sampling is an efficient computation that fully exploits GPU parallelism. However, such simple approximate posteriors are often insuf…
Bayesian inference for Levy density with Gibbs posterior in discrete sampling.
problem Inference on Levy density for financial models with jumps.
method Gibbs posterior framework using a loss function for intractable likelihood.
result Gibbs posterior achieves nearly optimal rate of convergence under certain conditions.
Exact guidance for discrete data improves posterior sampling efficiency.
problem Inefficient guidance for discrete data in posterior sampling.
method Derive exact transition rate for desired distribution given learned discrete flow matching model.
result Significantly improved efficiency with single forward pass per sampling step.
Bayesian framework for semiparametric regression of discrete data.
problem Complex distributional features of discrete data.
method Semiparametric modeling with nonparametric marginal and latent linear regression.
result Posterior consistency and analytical/posterior predictive distributions.
GFlowNet-EM learns complex latent variable models with discrete structures.
problem Challenges in modeling posteriors over discrete compositional latents with expectation-maximization.
method Uses GFlowNets to learn stochastic policies for sampling from complex posterior distributions.
result GFlowNet-EM enables training expressive LVMs with discrete compositional latents.
Flow Annealing Posterior Sampling unifies stochastic-process regression and PDE inverse problems.
problem Function-space posterior sampling for stochastic processes and inverse problems.
method Flow Annealing Posterior Sampling (FAPS) using pretrained function-space flow-matching priors.
result Coherent posterior samples with accurate uncertainty quantification.
A new framework for controllable generation of discrete masked models.
problem Efficient controllable generation of discrete data models.
method Plug-and-play framework based on importance sampling.
result Demonstrates versatility across multiple domains, including protein design.
A new model tackles language generation issues by using discrete variational attention.
problem Information under-representation and posterior collapse in variational autoencoders.
method Proposes a discrete variational attention model with categorical distribution over attention mechanism.
result Enhances latent space for language generation and avoids posterior collapse.
Particle-based variational inference offers a flexible way of approximating complex posterior distributions with a set of particles. In this paper we introduce a new particle-based variational inference method based on the theory of semi-discrete optimal transport. Instead of minimizing the KL divergence between the po…
Unified analysis of Gaussian Process Thompson Sampling without discretization.
problem Sequential decision-making over continuous action spaces.
method Frequentist regret analysis based on fractional Gaussian process posteriors.
result Unified discretization-free regret bound for various kernel classes.
Causal Posterior Estimation improves Bayesian inference in complex models.
problem Bayesian inference in models with intractable likelihood functions.
method Normalizing flow-based approximation with conditional dependence structure.
result Improved accuracy in posterior inference through direct incorporation of model structure.
The representation of the approximate posterior is a critical aspect of effective variational autoencoders (VAEs). Poor choices for the approximate posterior have a detrimental impact on the generative performance of VAEs due to the mismatch with the true posterior. We extend the class of posterior models that may be l…
We consider the inverse problem of reconstructing the posterior measure over the trajec- tories of a diffusion process from discrete time observations and continuous time constraints. We cast the problem in a Bayesian framework and derive approximations to the posterior distributions of single time marginals using vari…
Empirical Bayes rates via variational approximations and prior decomposition.
problem Nonparametric and high-dimensional inference convergence rates.
method Variational perspective and prior decomposition.
result Empirical Bayes posterior rates derived from variational Bayes.
Efficiently infers coupled hidden Markov models with noisy discrete observations.
problem Intractable inference for coupled continuous-time Markov chains with discrete observations.
method Latent Interacting Particle Systems, look-ahead functions, twisted Sequential Monte Carlo sampling.
result Demonstrated effectiveness on latent SIRS model and wildfire spread dynamics.
Proposes a new method for robust uncertainty quantification in regression tasks.
problem Robust uncertainty estimation for deep neural networks in regression tasks.
method Generalized Auxiliary Uncertainty Estimator (AuxUE) scheme, considering both aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties.
result DIDO method provides robust uncertainty estimates in noisy inputs, scalable to image-level and pixel-wise tasks.
GADD accelerates uniform-rate discrete diffusion models by 2 orders of magnitude.
problem Slow sampling in uniform-rate discrete diffusion models.
method Gibbs-based corrector (GADD) that constructs Gibbs posterior likelihoods directly from the concrete score function.
result Achieves an overall sampling complexity of O(polylog(ε−1)). New method infers hidden states in continuous-time phenomena better than traditional models.
problem Traditional HSMM's are limited to discrete time grids and cannot handle irregularly spaced data.
method Formulated integro-differential forward and backward equations for CTSMC's, introduced scalable Viterbi-type algorithm.
result Efficiently solved equations for posterior marginals and path estimates.
Bayesian inference of discrete component states in civil infrastructures using PGMs and GNNs.
problem Inferring discrete states of civil infrastructure components from measurable responses is an ill-posed inverse problem.
method The study proposes a novel Bayesian inversion paradigm based on Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGMs) and Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). PGMs are used to model the problem, with parameters learned from data and structural topology prior. Inference is accomplished by GNNs, and a graph property-based training strategy is developed.
result The proposed framework effectively solves the challenges of inferring the posterior PDF for discrete variables in high-dimensional problems.
A new method learns latent variable updates directly, not approximating the posterior.
problem Intractable maximum-likelihood learning for complex latent-variable models.
method Amortised learning using wake-sleep Monte-Carlo strategy.
result Demonstrated effectiveness on various complex models.
Proposes a new method for posterior sampling using MMD with negative distance kernel.
problem Posterior sampling and conditional generative modeling.
method Approximates joint distribution using discrete Wasserstein gradient flows of MMD with negative distance kernel.
result Establishes an error bound for posterior distributions and proves the method is a Wasserstein gradient flow.
Posterior Matching enables VAEs to model arbitrary conditional densities.
problem Modeling conditional dependencies in unsupervised learning.
method Posterior Matching framework for arbitrary conditioning.
result Posterior Matching enables VAEs to perform arbitrary conditioning without modification.
A new method infers graph structure and parameters using a single generative flow network.
problem Bayesian Network structure and parameter inference from data.
method Single GFlowNet with two-phase sampling: DAG generation followed by parameter assignment.
result Accurate approximation of joint posterior distribution over graph structure and parameters.
Bayesian network structure learning is often performed in a Bayesian setting, by evaluating candidate structures using their posterior probabilities for a given data set. Score-based algorithms then use those posterior probabilities as an objective function and return the maximum a posteriori network as the learned mod…
A new method for generating synthetic data using posterior distribution learning accelerates inference.
problem Generating high-quality synthetic data requires many discretization steps, which is computationally expensive.
method Learning the posterior distribution of clean data samples given noisy versions, using a scoring rule instead of regression loss.
result Consistently outperforms standard diffusion models at few discretization steps.
A new method uncovers discrete and continuous factors in gene expression data.
problem Jointly identifying discrete and continuous factors of variability without supervision.
method cpl-mixVAE framework using multiple interacting networks.
result The method successfully uncovers discrete and continuous factors in gene expression data.
We focus on variational inference in dynamical systems where the discrete time transition function (or evolution rule) is modelled by a Gaussian process. The dominant approach so far has been to use a factorised posterior distribution, decoupling the transition function from the system states. This is not exact in gene…
We develop a scalable method for Bayesian neural networks with stochastic differential equations.
problem Uncertainty quantification in deep neural networks.
method Gradient-based stochastic variational inference in continuous-depth Bayesian neural networks.
result Gradient estimator with zero variance as the approximation improves.
We present a Dirichlet process mixture model over discrete incomplete rankings and study two Gibbs sampling inference techniques for estimating posterior clusterings. The first approach uses a slice sampling subcomponent for estimating cluster parameters. The second approach marginalizes out several cluster parameters …
Improved vector quantization using Gaussian mixtures for better codebook utilization.
problem Training instability and information loss in discrete vector quantization.
method Generalized vector quantization with Gaussian mixture model and aggregated categorical posterior evidence lower bound.
result GM-VQ improves codebook utilization and reduces information loss without heuristics.
Bayesian neural networks reveal multimodal predictive distributions.
problem Uncertainty quantification and interpretability in neural networks.
method Discretized prior for inner layer weights, Gaussian mixture approximation of posterior predictive distribution.
result Distinct parameter realizations can produce the same training error but different posterior predictive distributions.
Probabilistic clustering models (or equivalently, mixture models) are basic building blocks in countless statistical models and involve latent random variables over discrete spaces. For these models, posterior inference methods can be inaccurate and/or very slow. In this work we introduce deep network architectures tra…
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…
Proposes a new method to estimate Bayesian neural network depth.
problem Estimating the depth of Bayesian neural networks.
method Uses a discrete truncated normal distribution to learn depth mean and variance, inferring posterior distributions by minimizing variational free energy.
result Improves test accuracy and reduces posterior depth variance on the spiral dataset.
We explore a new research direction in Bayesian variational inference with discrete latent variable priors where we exploit Kronecker matrix algebra for efficient and exact computations of the evidence lower bound (ELBO). The proposed "DIRECT" approach has several advantages over its predecessors; (i) it can exactly co…
NPE trains neural networks to approximate posterior distributions in SIR models from final outcome data.
problem Computational challenges in Bayesian inference for SIR models with final outcome data.
method Neural posterior estimation (NPE) using a logNormal posterior approximated by a neural network.
result NPE accurately recovers reference posteriors across various population sizes and transmission regimes.
Variational Causal Networks approximate Bayesian inference over causal structures.
problem Quantifying uncertainty in causal structure inference from finite data.
method Parametric variational family over DAGs, using Evidence Lower Bound (ELBO) for tractable learning.
result Approximation of the true posterior over DAGs is demonstrated to be good.
FLDD improves discrete diffusion models by learning a non-Markovian noising process.
problem Efficiency and quality of discrete diffusion models in few-step generation.
method Introduces a learnable non-Markovian forward (noising) process to match the target distribution.
result FLDD produces higher quality samples in fewer steps compared to conventional discrete diffusion models.
Self-supervised VAEs improve data compression and generation.
problem Efficient data compression and generation.
method Introducing self-supervised Variational Auto-Encoders with deterministic and discrete variational posteriors.
result Self-supervised VAEs simplify the objective function and improve data reconstruction.
Exact Bayesian inference for discrete models using probability generating functions.
problem Discrete statistical models with infinite support and continuous priors.
method Probabilistic programming language with automatic differentiation and probability generating functions.
result Genfer tool provides exact solutions for a wide range of inference problems.
An infinite parallel tempering bouncy particle sampler improves sampling efficiency for multimodal distributions.
problem Sampling from complex posterior distributions with high accuracy and efficiency.
method Introduced an infinite parallel tempering bouncy particle sampler (BPS-PT) to accelerate convergence.
result Demonstrated improved sampling efficiency for multimodal distributions through numerical simulations.
Discrete diffusion samplers improve sampling from unnormalised densities.
problem Sampling from discrete unnormalised densities efficiently.
method Introduce off-policy training techniques and data-to-energy Schrödinger bridge training for discrete diffusion samplers.
result Improved performance on synthetic and new benchmarks.
New bounds for MCMC on discrete spaces without dimension dependence.
problem High-dimensional statistical convergence analysis of MCMC methods.
method Combining multicommodity flow and single-element drift conditions.
result Informed Metropolis-Hastings algorithms achieve relaxation times independent of dimension.
New method for Bayesian inference in infinite dimensions using SDMs.
problem Bayesian inference in infinite-dimensional function spaces.
method Amortized conditional score-based diffusion models (SDMs).
result Validated approach for large-scale, discretization-invariant Bayesian inference.
Bayesian RL tackles uncertainty with deep generative models and sequential samplers.
problem Optimal decision-making in uncertain environments with limited data.
method Bayesian approach using deep generative models and prequential scoring rule for posterior inference. Policy learning via expected Thompson sampling.
result Improves policy learning in high-dimensional parameter spaces and continuous action spaces.
We introduce a new approach to learning in hierarchical latent-variable generative models called the "distributed distributional code Helmholtz machine", which emphasises flexibility and accuracy in the inferential process. In common with the original Helmholtz machine and later variational autoencoder algorithms (but …