The Gumbel-max trick and its extensions simplify sampling from categorical distributions in machine learning.
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The Gumbel trick is a method to sample from a discrete probability distribution, or to estimate its normalizing partition function. The method relies on repeatedly applying a random perturbation to the distribution in a particular way, each time solving for the most likely configuration. We derive an entire family of r…
Improved Gumbel watermark detection method.
Paper proposes a new estimator for generic discrete distributions.
Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) have limitations when the goal is to generate sequences of discrete elements. The reason for this is that samples from a distribution on discrete objects such as the multinomial are not differentiable with respect to the distribution parameters. This problem can be avoided by using…
Investigates statistical properties of perturb-softmax and perturb-argmax distributions.
Categorical variables are a natural choice for representing discrete structure in the world. However, stochastic neural networks rarely use categorical latent variables due to the inability to backpropagate through samples. In this work, we present an efficient gradient estimator that replaces the non-differentiable sa…
Unified approach to DP problems using Gumbel distribution and variational Bayesian inference.
The Gumbel-Softmax is a continuous distribution over the simplex that is often used as a relaxation of discrete distributions. Because it can be readily interpreted and easily reparameterized, it enjoys widespread use. We propose a modular and more flexible family of reparameterizable distributions where Gaussian noise…
Proposes a new method for estimating counterfactual treatment effects.
The problem of drawing samples from a discrete distribution can be converted into a discrete optimization problem. In this work, we show how sampling from a continuous distribution can be converted into an optimization problem over continuous space. Central to the method is a stochastic process recently described in ma…
This article proposes a method to quantify the structure of a bipartite graph using a network entropy per link. The network entropy of a bipartite graph with random links is calculated both numerically and theoretically. As an application of the proposed method to analyze collective behavior, the affairs in which parti…
The well-known Gumbel-Max Trick for sampling elements from a categorical distribution (or more generally a nonnegative vector) and its variants have been widely used in areas such as machine learning and information retrieval. To sample a random element (or a Gumbel-Max variable ) in proportion to its positive w…
The well-known Gumbel-Max trick for sampling from a categorical distribution can be extended to sample elements without replacement. We show how to implicitly apply this 'Gumbel-Top-' trick on a factorized distribution over sequences, allowing to draw exact samples without replacement using a Stochastic Beam Sea…
Boltzmann machines (BMs) are appealing candidates for powerful priors in variational autoencoders (VAEs), as they are capable of capturing nontrivial and multi-modal distributions over discrete variables. However, non-differentiability of the discrete units prohibits using the reparameterization trick, essential for lo…
Improved learning of probabilistic box embeddings by modeling parameters with Gumbel distributions.
GDM models time series with smoother transitions and interpretable states.
Study on estimating Gumbel--Max watermark proportions in edited documents.
Unified framework for gradient estimation in combinatorial spaces.
Permutations and matchings are core building blocks in a variety of latent variable models, as they allow us to align, canonicalize, and sort data. Learning in such models is difficult, however, because exact marginalization over these combinatorial objects is intractable. In response, this paper introduces a collectio…
Improved CAEs reduce training time and enhance generalization.
Estimates proportions of LLM-generated text in mixed documents.
Develops a framework to test excessive influence of small data subsets.
Many machine learning tasks require sampling a subset of items from a collection based on a parameterized distribution. The Gumbel-softmax trick can be used to sample a single item, and allows for low-variance reparameterized gradients with respect to the parameters of the underlying distribution. However, stochastic o…
Proposes unbiased estimators for training mixture of experts models.
Paper improves Gumbel-Softmax estimator variance reduction.
This paper improves MADDPG's performance in discrete grid-world scenarios.
Concrete distribution properties examined on simplex.
Modified EAT method improves Poisson gradient estimation.
A new notion of stochastic ordering is introduced to compare multivariate stochastic risk models with respect to extreme portfolio losses. In the framework of multivariate regular variation comparison criteria are derived in terms of ordering conditions on the spectral measures, which allows for analytical or numerical…
In many applications we seek to maximize an expectation with respect to a distribution over discrete variables. Estimating gradients of such objectives with respect to the distribution parameters is a challenging problem. We analyze existing solutions including finite-difference (FD) estimators and continuous relaxatio…
We define a novel family of algorithms for the adversarial multi-armed bandit problem, and provide a simple analysis technique based on convex smoothing. We prove two main results. First, we show that regularization via the \emph{Tsallis entropy}, which includes EXP3 as a special case, achieves the minim…
Paper analyzes singular subspace estimation in noisy matrix models.
Many problems in real life can be converted to combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) on graphs, that is to find a best node state configuration or a network structure such that the designed objective function is optimized under some constraints. However, these problems are notorious for their hardness to solve bec…
Heterogeneity of economic agents is emphasized in a new trend of macroeconomics. Accordingly the new emerging discipline requires one to replace the production function, one of key ideas in the conventional economics, by an alternative which can take an explicit account of distribution of firms' production activities. …
For network architecture search (NAS), it is crucial but challenging to simultaneously guarantee both effectiveness and efficiency. Towards achieving this goal, we develop a differentiable NAS solution, where the search space includes arbitrary feed-forward network consisting of the predefined number of connections. Be…
We present a probabilistic framework for studying adversarial attacks on discrete data. Based on this framework, we derive a perturbation-based method, Greedy Attack, and a scalable learning-based method, Gumbel Attack, that illustrate various tradeoffs in the design of attacks. We demonstrate the effectiveness of thes…
Neural jump model improves option pricing accuracy.
We introduce a new stochastic smoothing perspective to study adversarial contextual bandit problems. We propose a general algorithm template that represents random perturbation based algorithms and identify several perturbation distributions that lead to strong regret bounds. Using the idea of smoothness, we provide an…
Deep learning improves community detection in graph datasets.
A new algorithm optimizes graph problems faster and more accurately.
A new method for categorical variational inference using discrete normalizing flows.
To know the statistical distribution of a variable is an important problem in management of resources. Distributions of the power law type are observed in many real systems. However power law distributions have an infinite variance and thus can not be used as a standard distribution. Normally professionals in the area …
The tail of the distribution of a sum of a random number of independent and identically distributed nonnegative random variables depends on the tails of the number of terms and of the terms themselves. This situation is of interest in the collective risk model, where the total claim size in a portfolio is the sum of a …
Paper examines risk measure expansions under FGM dependence, improving accuracy at extreme levels.
Paper proposes a new method for predicting drug interactions using adversarial autoencoders.
Training of discrete latent variable models remains challenging because passing gradient information through discrete units is difficult. We propose a new class of smoothing transformations based on a mixture of two overlapping distributions, and show that the proposed transformation can be used for training binary lat…
Many neural network architectures rely on the choice of the activation function for each hidden layer. Given the activation function, the neural network is trained over the bias and the weight parameters. The bias catches the center of the activation, and the weights capture the scale. Here we propose to train the netw…