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arXiv research

A locally-built, LLM-digested index of recent arXiv papers in quant finance, geometry/topology, and statistical ML — keyword search served straight from SQLite on this machine.

168,982 papers · 148 categories

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142284425567 · Jun 202019922001200920172026
48 results for Tractable Distributions

Normalizing Flows model tractable distributions for efficient sampling and evaluation.

problem Creating efficient generative models for sampling and density evaluation.
method Construct and use Normalizing Flows to learn distributions.
result Comprehensive review of current Normalizing Flow methods and future directions.

We present a novel tractable generative model that extends Sum-Product Networks (SPNs) and significantly boosts their power. We call it Sum-Product-Quotient Networks (SPQNs), whose core concept is to incorporate conditional distributions into the model by direct computation using quotient nodes, e.g. $P(A|B) = \frac{P(…

2017-10-12abs ↗pdf ↗

High-risk domains require reliable confidence estimates from predictive models. Deep latent variable models provide these, but suffer from the rigid variational distributions used for tractable inference, which err on the side of overconfidence. We propose Stochastic Quantized Activation Distributions (SQUAD), which im…

2018-10-12abs ↗pdf ↗

Normalizing flows can now estimate densities on unknown manifolds.

problem Normalizing flows struggle with data on unknown low-dimensional manifolds.
method Conformal Embedding Flows, which combine standard flows with trainable conformal embeddings.
result Tractable density estimation on manifold-supported data is possible.

A central problem in machine learning involves modeling complex data-sets using highly flexible families of probability distributions in which learning, sampling, inference, and evaluation are still analytically or computationally tractable. Here, we develop an approach that simultaneously achieves both flexibility and…

2015-03-12abs ↗pdf ↗

In this paper we present decomposable priors, a family of priors over structure and parameters of tree belief nets for which Bayesian learning with complete observations is tractable, in the sense that the posterior is also decomposable and can be completely determined analytically in polynomial time. This follows from…

2013-01-16abs ↗pdf ↗

ACNML method improves uncertainty estimation for deep networks.

problem Uncertainty estimation and calibration for deep neural networks under distribution shift.
method Approximate Bayesian inference to approximate CNML distribution.
result ACNML compares favorably to prior techniques for uncertainty estimation.

Paper tackles expected predictions computation for arbitrary generative models.

problem Hard to compute expected predictions for arbitrary generative models.
method Identifies tractable generative and discriminative models for expected predictions.
result Tractable computation of high-order moments and expectations for classification.

Proposes Exogenous Matching for efficient counterfactual estimation.

problem Efficient estimation of counterfactual expressions in general settings.
method Transforms variance minimization into conditional distribution learning.
result Outperforms other importance sampling methods in counterfactual estimation.

Gradient flows on distributions of distributions for machine learning tasks.

problem Designing gradient flows for datasets of probability distributions.
method Representing classes as conditional distributions, modeling datasets as mixture distributions, using Wasserstein over Wasserstein (WoW) distance and gradients.
result Demonstrated gradient flows for dataset transfer and distillation tasks.

This paper proposes a distributionally robust approach to logistic regression. We use the Wasserstein distance to construct a ball in the space of probability distributions centered at the uniform distribution on the training samples. If the radius of this ball is chosen judiciously, we can guarantee that it contains t…

2015-09-30abs ↗pdf ↗

Thompson sampling has emerged as an effective heuristic for a broad range of online decision problems. In its basic form, the algorithm requires computing and sampling from a posterior distribution over models, which is tractable only for simple special cases. This paper develops ensemble sampling, which aims to approx…

2017-05-20abs ↗pdf ↗

Casting neural networks in generative frameworks is a highly sought-after endeavor these days. Contemporary methods, such as Generative Adversarial Networks, capture some of the generative capabilities, but not all. In particular, they lack the ability of tractable marginalization, and thus are not suitable for many ta…

2016-10-13abs ↗pdf ↗

We introduce RNADE, a new model for joint density estimation of real-valued vectors. Our model calculates the density of a datapoint as the product of one-dimensional conditionals modeled using mixture density networks with shared parameters. RNADE learns a distributed representation of the data, while having a tractab…

2013-06-02abs ↗pdf ↗

Heavy-tailed distributions are widely used in robust mixture modelling due to possessing thick tails. As a computationally tractable subclass of the stable distributions, sub-Gaussian αα-stable distribution received much interest in the literature. Here, we introduce a type of expectation maximization algorithm that e…

2017-01-24abs ↗pdf ↗

The goal of regression and classification methods in supervised learning is to minimize the empirical risk, that is, the expectation of some loss function quantifying the prediction error under the empirical distribution. When facing scarce training data, overfitting is typically mitigated by adding regularization term…

2017-10-27abs ↗pdf ↗

DBKs enable scalable GPs with tractable inference for large datasets.

problem Scaling Gaussian processes to large and complex datasets while maintaining tractable inference.
method DBKs constructed from neural-network-parameterized basis functions with explicit low-rank structure, enabling linear-complexity inference.
result DBKs provide a unified perspective and improve predictive accuracy, uncertainty quantification, and computational efficiency.

We connect shift-invariant characteristic kernels to infinitely divisible distributions on Rd\mathbb{R}^{d}. Characteristic kernels play an important role in machine learning applications with their kernel means to distinguish any two probability measures. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, we show, usi…

2014-03-28abs ↗pdf ↗

FTIP uses normalizing flows to improve posterior inference in function space.

problem Challenges in posterior inference with implicit-process priors.
method FTIP uses normalizing flows to define a richer variational distribution over combination weights.
result FTIP captures asymmetric and multimodal posterior structure better than Gaussian coefficient approximations.

The Lugannani-Rice formula is a saddlepoint approximation method for estimating the tail probability distribution function, which was originally studied for the sum of independent identically distributed random variables. Because of its tractability, the formula is now widely used in practical financial engineering as …

2013-10-12abs ↗pdf ↗

Deep Gaussian Processes are reinterpreted as deep trigonometric networks for tractable inference.

problem Challenging inference in DGPs due to intractable marginalization in latent function space.
method Viewing DGPs as deep trigonometric networks with Bochner's theorem, and using the wide limit with a bottleneck to translate DGPs into deep trigonometric networks.
result The weight space view yields the same effective covariance functions as obtained in function space, and varying prior distributions over network parameters is equivalent to employing different kernels.

We present a new algorithm for approximate inference in probabilistic programs, based on a stochastic gradient for variational programs. This method is efficient without restrictions on the probabilistic program; it is particularly practical for distributions which are not analytically tractable, including highly struc…

2013-01-07abs ↗pdf ↗

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

problem Intractability of conjugate prior for Dirichlet and beta distributions.
method Derive conjugate prior, define closed-form approximation, and provide algorithm.
result Closed-form approximation enables fully tractable Bayesian treatment.

Unified framework for tractable inference scenarios in machine learning models.

problem Complex inference scenarios in machine learning models.
method Characterization of tractable modular operations over circuits and derivation of a unified framework.
result Unified framework for reasoning about tractable models.

New method for fitting graphical models with latent variables using regularized conditional likelihood.

problem Graphical modeling with latent variables and confounding dependencies.
method Regularized conditional likelihood for exponential family graphical models.
result Framework applicable to broader settings without knowing latent variables' distribution.

A new distance metric for vMF distributions simplifies spherical data analysis.

problem Intractability of normalization constants and lack of suitable geometric metrics for comparing vMF distributions.
method Proposes a Wasserstein-like distance that decomposes vMF distribution discrepancies into angular and concentration components.
result The proposed distance metric induces a latent geometric structure on the space of non-degenerate vMF distributions.

Efficient EP algorithm improves smoothing distribution inference in financial models.

problem Computational intractability of smoothing distribution in high dimensions.
method Adapted expectation propagation (EP) algorithms for the unified skew-normal family.
result Accuracy gains in financial illustrations over existing approximate algorithms.