A new particle algorithm improves mean-field variational inference.
problem Efficiently approximating nonparametric posterior distributions in machine learning.
method Introduces PArticle VI (PAVI), a novel particle-based algorithm for nonparametric mean-field approximation.
result Obtains non-asymptotic error bounds for PArticle VI, providing the first end-to-end guarantee for particle-based MFVI.
New method accelerates energetic variational inference using particle dynamics.
problem Efficiently solving variational inference problems with reduced computational cost.
method Particle-based variational inference with implicit scheme, inspired by energy quadratization and operator splitting.
result Significantly reduces computational cost compared to existing methods.
MPM-ParVI uses particle sampling for variational inference.
problem Variational inference for complex probabilistic models.
method Material Point Method (MPM) for particle-based simulation.
result Deterministic sampling and inference for intractable densities.
SPH-ParVI uses fluid dynamics to sample unknown densities efficiently.
problem Sampling partially known densities or using gradients in probabilistic models.
method Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) for modeling fluid dynamics to approximate target densities.
result SPH-ParVI provides fast, flexible, scalable, and deterministic sampling for Bayesian inference and generative models.
Electrostatics method samples complex distributions deterministically.
problem Sampling and inference of complex, high-dimensional distributions.
method Electrostatics-based particle system with Newton mechanics principles.
result Method achieves comparable performance to other methods in benchmark tasks.
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…
A new EVI framework improves ParVI methods by maintaining variational structure and reducing KL-divergence.
problem Improving variational inference methods for better approximation of target distributions.
method EVI framework that minimizes the VI objective function based on an energy-dissipation law, including a new 'Approximation-then-Variation' scheme.
result The new scheme significantly decreases KL-divergence and outperforms existing ParVI methods in fidelity.
Paper formulates particle flow using variational inference and Fisher-Rao gradient flow.
problem Estimating posterior densities in probabilistic models.
method Variational formulation of particle flow, Fisher-Rao gradient flow, Gaussian and Gaussian mixture approximations.
result Gaussian and Gaussian mixture approximations of Fisher-Rao particle flow reduce to Exact Daum and Huang particle flow under linear Gaussian assumptions.
This paper tackles hidden state inference for HMMs using particle filtering.
problem Inference for hidden states under HMMs is challenging due to unavailable true labels.
method Adaptive conformal inference framework using particle filtering.
result The framework produces prediction sets with specific aggregated coverage levels.
This paper studies when particle filtering is efficient for planning in partially observed systems.
problem The efficiency of particle filtering for planning in partially observed linear dynamical systems.
method Coupling of ideal and approximate sequences to bound particle complexity.
result Polynomially many particles suffice for stable systems to approximate optimal planning.
Bayesian inference for neural networks improves uncertainty quantification.
problem Improving predictive uncertainty in neural networks.
method Ensemble Kalman filter extensions and interacting particle systems.
result Effective methods for quantifying predictive uncertainty in neural networks.
DriftLite improves inference quality of diffusion models without retraining.
problem Adapting pre-trained diffusion models to new target distributions without retraining.
method Lightweight, training-free particle-based approach that steers inference dynamics with optimal stability control.
result Consistently reduces variance and improves sample quality over existing methods.
Differentiable PF via entropy-regularized OT for better inference.
problem Non-differentiability of traditional PF resampling methods.
method Entropy-regularized optimal transport for differentiable resampling.
result Convergent differentiable PF method with improved gradient estimates.
A new ParVI framework improves particle-based variational inference methods.
problem Non-trivial kernel design in particle-based variational inference methods.
method Proposes a generalized Wasserstein gradient descent (GWG) framework with broader regularizers.
result Demonstrates strong convergence guarantees and effectiveness on simulated and real data.
EnKO combines VI and EnKF for efficient latent dynamics inference.
problem Particle degeneracy and biased gradient estimators in SMC-based methods.
method EnKO: hybrid of VI and EnKF.
result EnKO outperforms SMC-based methods in predictive ability and particle efficiency.
Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a recently proposed particle-based Bayesian inference method, which has attracted a lot of interest due to its remarkable approximation ability and particle efficiency compared to traditional variational inference and Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. However, we observed th…
Improves SVGD for high-dimensional Bayesian inference by reducing variance collapse.
problem Variance collapse in SVGD reduces accuracy and diversity of estimation.
method Augmented Message Passing SVGD (AUMP-SVGD) method, a two-stage optimization procedure.
result AUMP-SVGD achieves satisfactory accuracy and overcomes variance collapse in various benchmark problems.
A new variational method for SSMs improves inference efficiency.
problem Hard variational inference for state space models.
method Proposes variational marginal particle filter (VMPF) based on Rao-Blackwellization.
result VMPF provides tighter variational bounds and sometimes benefits from unbiased reparameterization.
State space models (SSMs) provide a flexible framework for modeling complex time series via a latent stochastic process. Inference for nonlinear, non-Gaussian SSMs is often tackled with particle methods that do not scale well to long time series. The challenge is two-fold: not only do computations scale linearly with t…
New methods for Bayesian inference using mean shift particle systems.
problem Approximating expectations with unnormalized densities in Bayesian inference.
method Mean shift interacting particle systems that minimize maximum mean discrepancy (MMD).
result Mean shift interacting particle systems converge quickly and capture complex distributions.
Proposes PGPS for efficient Bayesian inference.
problem Efficient sampling from complex posterior distributions.
method Path-guided particle-based sampling with Log-weighted Shrinkage.
result PGPS generates samples closer to target distribution.
Bayesian inference reconstructs external potentials in DFT for many-particle systems.
problem Reconstructing external potentials in classical density-functional theory (DFT) for many-particle systems.
method Combines Bayesian inference with classical DFT to probabilistically reconstruct external potentials.
result Accurately infers external potentials and density profiles with uncertainty quantification.
Paper explores SVGD for Bayesian inference, linking deterministic and stochastic dynamics.
problem Bayesian inference and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods.
method Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) with deterministic and stochastic dynamics.
result Identifies Stein-Fisher information as the leading order contribution in the long-time and many-particle regime.
New coin sampling method for Bayesian inference without learning rates.
problem Scalable Bayesian inference with learning rate tuning issues.
method Coin sampling for gradient-based Bayesian inference.
result Comparable performance to other ParVI algorithms without learning rate tuning.
GER learns particle dynamics from unpaired snapshots using physics-informed GANs.
problem Learning particle dynamics from unpaired snapshots with physics constraints.
method Physics-informed generative model to fit particle ensemble distributions.
result Inferred dynamics of particle ensembles governed by SODEs up to 100 dimensions.
We consider probabilistic programming for birth-death models of evolution and introduce a new widely-applicable inference method that combines an extension of the alive particle filter (APF) with automatic Rao-Blackwellization via delayed sampling. Birth-death models of evolution are an important family of phylogenetic…
Persistent sampling improves SMC efficiency by retaining and reusing particles.
problem High computational costs and particle impoverishment in SMC.
method Persistent sampling (PS) retains and reuses particles from all prior iterations, using multiple importance sampling and resampling from a mixture of historical distributions.
result PS achieves more accurate posterior approximations and lower variance in marginal likelihood estimates without additional likelihood evaluations.
dSMC improves parallel processing of state-space models.
problem Processing multiple observations efficiently in state-space models.
method A parallel-in-time particle smoother that reduces complexity to log(T).
result dSMC achieves O(log(T)) time complexity on parallel architectures.
SMI uses mixture models to improve SVGD's performance in Bayesian inference.
problem Variance collapse in SVGD for Bayesian inference, especially with small models.
method Generalizes SVGD to Stein mixture models, optimizing an ELBO lower bound.
result SMI avoids variance collapse and accurately estimates uncertainty for small BNNs.
New methods improve precision of LHC measurements.
problem Inference on high-dimensional LHC data is difficult due to complex simulators.
method Simulation-based inference methods combining machine learning and simulator information.
result These techniques have the potential to substantially improve LHC measurements.
The paper studies how to improve language model inference using particle filtering.
problem Understanding the accuracy-cost tradeoffs of inference-time methods for large language models.
method Introduces particle filtering algorithms like Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) to study language model inference.
result Identifies criteria enabling non-asymptotic guarantees for SMC and fundamental limits faced by all particle filtering methods.
New algorithm trains latent diffusion models using interacting particles.
problem Training latent diffusion models efficiently and accurately.
method Reformulate training as minimizing a free energy functional, then approximate with interacting particles.
result The new algorithm outperforms previous methods in experiments.
A method for inferring motility models and heterogeneity from particle trajectories.
problem Understanding motility patterns from discrete trajectory data of biological agents.
method Maximum likelihood approach for second-order Langevin models with population heterogeneity.
result The proposed method outperforms alternative approaches for short trajectories.
We present the particle stochastic approximation EM (PSAEM) algorithm for learning of dynamical systems. The method builds on the EM algorithm, an iterative procedure for maximum likelihood inference in latent variable models. By combining stochastic approximation EM and particle Gibbs with ancestor sampling (PGAS), PS…
New methods combine MALA and mGRAD for scalable Bayesian inference in high-dimensional state-space models.
problem Bayesian inference in high-dimensional state-space models with limited scalability.
method Combines gradient-based MALA and prior-informed mGRAD for scalable inference.
result Extends classical MCMC methods to handle multiple time steps and particles.
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…
Bayesian methods are appealing in their flexibility in modeling complex data and ability in capturing uncertainty in parameters. However, when Bayes' rule does not result in tractable closed-form, most approximate inference algorithms lack either scalability or rigorous guarantees. To tackle this challenge, we propose …
This paper presents a fast Bayesian filtering technique for state estimation.
problem Bottleneck in Bayesian inference for state estimation from noisy sensor data.
method Processor-native uncertainty tracking for uncertainty propagation and inference.
result Deterministic approximate filtering with up to 805x speedup and competitive accuracy.
Particle Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques rank among current state-of-the-art methods for probabilistic program inference. A drawback of these techniques is that they rely on importance resampling, which results in degenerate particle trajectories and a low effective sample size for variables sampled early in a prog…
While Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) have drawn increasing attention, their posterior inference remains challenging, due to the high-dimensional and over-parameterized nature. To address this issue, several highly flexible and scalable variational inference procedures based on the idea of particle optimization have be…
New particle-based VI algorithm expands function class and improves scalability.
problem Limited function class in particle-based VI algorithms restricts flexibility and scalability.
method Introduces a functional regularization term to expand the function class and proposes PFG algorithm.
result Proposed PFG algorithm has larger function class, improved scalability, better adaptation to ill-conditioned distributions, and provable convergence.
This tutorial provides a gentle introduction to the particle Metropolis-Hastings (PMH) algorithm for parameter inference in nonlinear state-space models together with a software implementation in the statistical programming language R. We employ a step-by-step approach to develop an implementation of the PMH algorithm …
Particle-based variational inference methods (ParVIs) have gained attention in the Bayesian inference literature, for their capacity to yield flexible and accurate approximations. We explore ParVIs from the perspective of Wasserstein gradient flows, and make both theoretical and practical contributions. We unify variou…
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.
PVI improves SIVI by directly optimizing ELBO without parametric assumptions.
problem Intractable variational densities in SIVI methods.
method Particle Variational Inference (PVI) using empirical measures to approximate optimal mixing distributions.
result PVI directly optimizes the ELBO and performs favorably compared to other SIVI methods.
ATPF combines PF and EnKF for better inference in complex systems.
problem Weight degeneracy in PF and approximation errors in EnKF.
method Adversarial learning to improve posterior matching and incorporate kernel methods for optimization.
result ATPF provides theoretical guarantees and practical advantages over PF and EnKF.
Proposes optimizing neural network ensemble diversity in feature space.
problem Improving diversity in neural network ensembles while maintaining performance.
method Optimizes particles in the feature space of a specific intermediate layer.
result Significantly outperforms Deep Ensembles on various metrics.
ePF improves PF for ITS by balancing exploration and exploitation, outperforming baselines.
problem Premature exploitation in PF leads to suboptimal solutions under constrained budgets.
method Integrates Entropic Annealing and Look-ahead Modulation to preserve diversity and evaluate potential.
result Significant improvement in task reward (up to 50% relative) on math benchmarks.