The paper introduces structured variational families to improve scalability in black-box variational inference.
problem Scalability issues in black-box variational inference, especially for large datasets and hierarchical models.
method Developed structured variational families that achieve better iteration complexity of O(N) compared to full-rank families.
result Structured variational families can achieve better scaling with respect to dataset size N, improving iteration complexity from O(N^2) to O(N).
Stochastic variational inference offers an attractive option as a default method for differentiable probabilistic programming. However, the performance of the variational approach depends on the choice of an appropriate variational family. Here, we introduce automatic structured variational inference (ASVI), a fully au…
Study on complex variation of Hodge structures for non-Kähler manifolds.
problem Understanding complex variation of Hodge structures for non-Kähler manifolds.
method Analyzes holomorphic families of compact complex manifolds with specific cohomology properties.
result Period map is holomorphic and transversal under given conditions.
The study proves rigidity for mixed Hodge structures and applies to curve families.
problem Rigidity of period maps for mixed Hodge structures.
method Holomorphic bisectional curvature approach.
result Establishes rigidity in various cases, including curve families.
The paper shows that almost every path structure is not variational.
problem Determining if a path structure is variational.
method Generalized Douglas's result to higher dimensions and analyzed path geometries with infinitesimal symmetries.
result Almost every path structure is not variational.
Improved Bayesian uncertainty quantification using variational bagging.
problem Inefficient and underestimating uncertainty in mean-field variational Bayes.
method Integrates bagging with variational Bayes for improved inference.
result Bagged variational posterior provides proper uncertainty quantification.
We develop a general variational inference method that preserves dependency among the latent variables. Our method uses copulas to augment the families of distributions used in mean-field and structured approximations. Copulas model the dependency that is not captured by the original variational distribution, and thus …
We propose a new variational family for Bayesian neural networks. We decompose the variational posterior into two components, where the radial component captures the strength of each neuron in terms of its magnitude; while the directional component captures the statistical dependencies among the weight parameters. The …
Improved inference for models with continuous latent variables.
problem Inference accuracy with traditional variational methods is limited.
method Reparameterized Variational Rejection Sampling (RVRS) using a proposal distribution with a reparameterized gradient estimator.
result RVRS offers a better trade-off between computational cost and inference fidelity.
Semi-Implicit Variational Inference (SIVI) is improved with SIVI-SM using score matching.
problem Intractable densities in variational distributions hinder SIVI training.
method SIVI-SM uses score matching to handle intractable densities in a minimax formulation.
result SIVI-SM outperforms ELBO-based SIVI methods in Bayesian inference tasks.
Develops methods for structured variational inference with star-structured models.
problem Inference in models with interdependent variables.
method Star-structured variational inference, existence, uniqueness, self-consistency proofs, approximation error bounds, gradient-based algorithm.
result First results for existence, uniqueness, and self-consistency of variational approximations in star-structured models.
Geometric framework analyzes bias in variational inference for posterior functionals.
problem Analyzing the bias of posterior functionals under variational approximations.
method Developed a geometric framework to evaluate the bias of posterior functionals using the variational tangent space.
result The leading-order bias of a posterior functional is determined by its component orthogonal to the variational tangent space.
Study connects K3 surfaces to holomorphic metrics, solving complex structure variation.
problem Understanding complex structure variation on K3 surfaces.
method Using Picard-Fuchs equations and lattice polarizations.
result Explicit example of locally conformally flat holomorphic metric.
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…
Bayesian approach generalizes ADMM for federated learning.
problem Improving federated learning efficiency and accuracy.
method Integrates Bayesian duality with ADMM for optimization.
result New extensions of ADMM for various distributions.
In this paper, we study the analogue of the Shafarevich conjecture for polarized Calabi-Yau varieties. We use variations of Hodge structures and Higgs bundles to establish a criterion for the {\it rigidity} of families. We then apply the criterion to obtain that some important and typical families of Calabi-Yau varieti…
Many recent advances in large scale probabilistic inference rely on variational methods. The success of variational approaches depends on (i) formulating a flexible parametric family of distributions, and (ii) optimizing the parameters to find the member of this family that most closely approximates the exact posterior…
Geometric analysis improves convergence of variational inference.
problem Challenges in analyzing convergence of variational inference due to non-convexity and non-smoothness.
method Exploits exponential family structure and Bregman divergences to geometrically analyze the optimization landscape.
result Establishes non-asymptotic convergence rates for gradient descent algorithms.
We investigate variations of Brieskorn lattices over non-compact parameter spaces, and discuss the corresponding limit objects on the boundary divisor. We study the associated variation of twistors and the corresponding limit mixed twistor structures. We construct a compact classifying space for regular singular Briesk…
The non-abelian Hodge correspondence identifies complex variations of Hodge structures with certain Higgs bundles. In this work we analyze this relationship, and some of its ramifications, when the variations of Hodge structures are determined by a (complete) one-dimensional family of compact Calabi-Yau manifolds. This…
Mixture model-based clustering has become an increasingly popular data analysis technique since its introduction over fifty years ago, and is now commonly utilized within a family setting. Families of mixture models arise when the component parameters, usually the component covariance (or scale) matrices, are decompose…
We consider a family of tight contact structures on the three-dimensional torus and we compute the relative Contact Homology by using the variational theory of critical points at infinity. We will also show some algebraic equivariant homology reductions.
New method for variational inference without conjugacy constraints.
problem Efficient variational inference with flexible prior and approximation families.
method Wasserstein gradient flow for mean-field approximation.
result Improved convergence and efficiency of variational inference.
This paper speeds up inference in large hierarchical models.
problem Inference in large hierarchical models is slow and difficult.
method Amortized variational inference with shared parameters.
result Amortized inference is as accurate as a full-rank Gaussian but much faster.
Cascading flows improve variational inference in structured programs.
problem Challenges in variational inference for complex probabilistic programs.
method Integrates normalizing flows and ASVI to create cascading flows, which embed the forward-pass of probabilistic programs.
result Cascading flows outperform normalizing flows and ASVI in structured inference problems.
We describe \textit{deep exponential families} (DEFs), a class of latent variable models that are inspired by the hidden structures used in deep neural networks. DEFs capture a hierarchy of dependencies between latent variables, and are easily generalized to many settings through exponential families. We perform infere…
Resolves conjectures on non-abelian Hodge loci for quasi-projective varieties.
problem Understanding non-abelian Hodge loci for quasi-projective varieties.
method Analyzes Z-local systems and polarized variations of Hodge structures. result Proves algebraicity of non-abelian Hodge loci for Q-anisotropic monodromy. Novel deep Gaussian process improves predictive uncertainty.
problem Flexible probabilistic data representations with tractable inference.
method Structured Gaussian variational family with marginalisation.
result Improved accuracy and calibrated uncertainty estimates.
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.
New method for tensor completion using nonconvex dual total variation.
problem Tensor completion from partial measurements with exponential-family noise.
method Proposed dual-TV (DTV) regularizers for tensor completion under exponential-family noise.
result Theoretical upper bounds on recovery error for tensor completion.
Variational inference for latent variable models is prevalent in various machine learning problems, typically solved by maximizing the Evidence Lower Bound (ELBO) of the true data likelihood with respect to a variational distribution. However, freely enriching the family of variational distribution is challenging since…
Semi-implicit variational inference (SIVI) is introduced to expand the commonly used analytic variational distribution family, by mixing the variational parameter with a flexible distribution. This mixing distribution can assume any density function, explicit or not, as long as independent random samples can be generat…
New geometric insights reveal properties of adversarial training problems.
problem Adversarial training in binary classification.
method Equivalence with regularized risk minimization and convex relaxations.
result Existence of minimal and maximal solutions, and regular solutions.
Paper bridges VI and GFlowNets, showing their equivalence in certain cases.
problem Modeling distributions over continuous and discrete structures.
method Demonstrates equivalence between VI and GFlowNets in specific scenarios.
result GFlowNets are more suitable for off-policy training without high gradient variance.
Study on polyharmonic curves on spheres and space forms.
problem Classifying polyharmonic curves of constant curvature.
method Analyzing curves on spheres and space forms, deriving explicit families.
result New insights into higher order variational problems.
Hypergraphs allow one to encode higher-order relationships in data and are thus a very flexible modeling tool. Current learning methods are either based on approximations of the hypergraphs via graphs or on tensor methods which are only applicable under special conditions. In this paper, we present a new learning frame…
Variational Inference is a powerful tool in the Bayesian modeling toolkit, however, its effectiveness is determined by the expressivity of the utilized variational distributions in terms of their ability to match the true posterior distribution. In turn, the expressivity of the variational family is largely limited by …
New variational flows improve Monte Carlo and normalization tasks.
problem Intractable global optimum in expressive variational families.
method Constructing asymptotically exact variational flows from involutive MCMC kernels.
result Provable total variation convergence of new variational families.
The Black Box Variational Inference (Ranganath et al. (2014)) algorithm provides a universal method for Variational Inference, but taking advantage of special properties of the approximation family or of the target can improve the convergence speed significantly. For example, if the approximation family is a transforma…
This paper constructs a family of coordinate systems about a point on a quaternionic contact manifold, called quaternionic contact pseudohermitian normal coordinates. Once defined, conformal variations of the quaternionic contact structure induce changes on the coordinates which are studied in an effort to simplify the…
A generalized complex manifold which satisfies the ∂∂-lemma admits a Hodge decomposition in twisted cohomology. Using a Courant algebroid theoretic approach we study the behavior of the Hodge decomposition in smooth and holomorphic families of generalized complex manifolds. In particular we …
Natural-gradient methods enable fast and simple algorithms for variational inference, but due to computational difficulties, their use is mostly limited to \emph{minimal} exponential-family (EF) approximations. In this paper, we extend their application to estimate \emph{structured} approximations such as mixtures of E…
Symmetry helps VI recover certain statistics.
problem Understanding how symmetry in variational inference affects the recovery of statistics.
method Developed a general theory of symmetry-induced statistic recovery in variational inference.
result Symmetry can force the recovery of certain statistics in VI, even under model misspecification.
Improves variational inference for sparse models using mixtures of exponential families.
problem Intractability of posterior distributions in Bayesian sparse models.
method Flexible mean field variational inference using mixtures of non-overlapping exponential families.
result Mixtures of exponential families with non-overlapping support form an exponential family, enabling analytical updates.
We propose a general modeling and inference framework that composes probabilistic graphical models with deep learning methods and combines their respective strengths. Our model family augments graphical structure in latent variables with neural network observation models. For inference, we extend variational autoencode…
A recent algorithmic family for distributed optimization, DIGing's, have been shown to have geometric convergence over time-varying undirected/directed graphs. Nevertheless, an identical step-size for all agents is needed. In this paper, we study the convergence rates of the Adapt-Then-Combine (ATC) variation of the DI…
I classify the Finsler structures on the 2-sphere that have constant Finsler-Gauss curvature and whose geodesics are the great circles. Modulo diffeomorphism, there is a 2-parameter family of such Finsler structures, only one of which is homogeneous or symmetric, namely the Riemannian one. I discuss the history of the …
The paper provides theoretical guarantees for transformation-based models in variational inference.
problem Theoretical justification for transformation-based models in variational inference.
method Theoretical analysis of non-linear latent variable models and Gaussian process priors.
result Theoretical guarantees for implicit variational inference, achieving optimal risk bounds and approximating the true posterior.