Generative Bayesian Filtering improves inference in complex models without explicit density evaluations.
problem Performing posterior inference in complex nonlinear and non-Gaussian state-space models.
method Generative Bayesian Filtering (GBF) extends GBC to dynamic settings using deep neural networks for recursive posterior inference. Generative-Gibbs sampler bypasses density evaluations for parameter learning.
result GBF significantly outperforms likelihood-free approaches in accuracy and robustness for intractable state-space models.
Develops algorithm to differentiate Metropolis-Hastings for optimization.
problem Optimizing intractable densities with discrete components.
method Fuses stochastic automatic differentiation with Markov chain coupling schemes.
result Unbiased and low-variance gradient estimator for intractable densities.
Generalized score matching for densities on general domains.
problem Estimating density functions on complex, non-standard domains.
method A generalized score matching approach for densities on general domains.
result The method provides theoretical guarantees and empirical advantages.
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.
Normalizing flows improve density estimation from noisy data.
problem Estimating underlying density from noisy samples.
method Use normalizing flows for density estimation with arbitrary noise distributions, using amortized variational inference.
result Normalizing flows can outperform Gaussian mixtures for density deconvolution.
I consider two problems in machine learning and statistics: the problem of estimating the joint probability density of a collection of random variables, known as density estimation, and the problem of inferring model parameters when their likelihood is intractable, known as likelihood-free inference. The contribution o…
Neural networks help create summary statistics for complex models.
problem Creating summary statistics for models with intractable likelihood functions.
method Infomax learning with neural networks to maximize mutual information.
result Improves performance of approximate Bayesian computation and neural likelihood methods.
New method for density estimation without approximating posterior distributions.
problem Challenges in non-smooth data distributions for Bayesian density estimation.
method Autoregressive likelihood decomposition and Gaussian process prior in a quasi-Bayesian framework.
result Achieves state-of-the-art results in small-data regimes.
Paper develops a scalable distributed inference algorithm for sensor networks.
problem Efficient inference in intelligent sensor networks for location, tracking, and mapping.
method Distributed variational inference algorithm for continuous variables and large-scale data.
result Derives a separable lower bound for distributed variational inference with one-hop communication.
Posterior inference with an intractable likelihood is becoming an increasingly common task in scientific domains which rely on sophisticated computer simulations. Typically, these forward models do not admit tractable densities forcing practitioners to make use of approximations. This work introduces a novel approach t…
Conditional density estimation generalizes regression by modeling a full density f(yjx) rather than only the expected value E(yjx). This is important for many tasks, including handling multi-modality and generating prediction intervals. Though fundamental and widely applicable, nonparametric conditional density estimat…
Maximum Likelihood Estimators (MLE) has many good properties. For example, the asymptotic variance of MLE solution attains equality of the asymptotic Cram{é}r-Rao lower bound (efficiency bound), which is the minimum possible variance for an unbiased estimator. However, obtaining such MLE solution requires calculating t…
New method uses Fokker-Planck equation for sampling and inference.
problem Intractability of evaluating probability density in practical applications.
method Reformulates Fokker-Planck equation as a particle flow method, using velocity field.
result Turns intractable density evaluation into an advantage for variational inference, kernel mean embeddings, and sequential Monte Carlo.
Logistic Gaussian process (LGP) priors provide a flexible alternative for modelling unknown densities. The smoothness properties of the density estimates can be controlled through the prior covariance structure of the LGP, but the challenge is the analytically intractable inference. In this paper, we present approximat…
Score matching method improves density estimation for truncated data on manifolds.
problem Density estimation for truncated data on manifolds with intractable normalising constant.
method Truncated score matching extended to Riemannian manifolds with boundary.
result Score matching estimator approximates true parameter values with low error.
Paper proposes nested MLMC for SNPE with intractable likelihoods.
problem Estimating posterior distributions from intractable likelihoods.
method Nested MLMC for loss function and gradients, with convergence results.
result Effective methods for approximating complex multimodal posteriors.
Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are a powerful approach to unsupervised learning. They have achieved state-of-the-art performance in the image domain. However, GANs are limited in two ways. They often learn distributions with low support---a phenomenon known as mode collapse---and they do not guarantee the exist…
This work uses neural density estimation to analyze laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy data, enabling accurate predictions and uncertainty quantification.
problem Inference of probability densities in high-dimensional spectral data is often intractable.
method Normalizing flows on structured spectral latent spaces for density estimation and uncertainty quantification.
result The approach enables generation of realistic spectral samples and accurate prediction of state vectors with well-calibrated uncertainties.
Paper proposes approximate Stein classes for efficient truncated density estimation.
problem Difficulties in estimating truncated density models due to intractable normalising constants and boundary conditions.
method Adapts score matching to solve the problem, introduces approximate Stein classes and a novel discrepancy measure, TKSD.
result TKSD does not require a fixed weighting function and can be evaluated using only boundary samples, leading to improved accuracy.
EG-LF-MCMC infers posterior densities without likelihoods.
problem Posterior inference for models with intractable likelihoods.
method Two-phase approach: error recording and classification for MCMC.
result EG-LF-MCMC provides approximate posterior densities efficiently.
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.
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.
The paper tackles video prediction by estimating conditional densities implicitly.
problem Temporal prediction uncertainty and high-dimensional probabilistic inference in natural scenes.
method Score-based conditional density estimation using sequence-to-image networks trained on a resilience-to-noise objective.
result The method handles occlusion boundaries and weights predictive evidence by reliability.
NPE improves scalability and efficiency for ERGMs.
problem Scalability and efficiency issues in Bayesian ERGM estimation.
method Neural posterior estimation (NPE) for ERGMs using neural network density estimation.
result NPE provides more efficient and scalable inference for ERGMs.
A new method avoids partition function computation for Gibbs density estimation.
problem Estimating Gibbs density functions without partition function computation.
method Maximum Recovery MAP (MR-MAP) and least-action type potential.
result MR-MAP estimators solve optimization problem quickly using neural network.
A new method improves flow matching by dynamically weighting density estimates.
problem High-dimensional integration inefficiency in flow matching.
method Density-weighted Dynamic Stein operators.
result Significant improvement in vector field smoothness and sampling efficiency.
Survey of Monte Carlo methods for noisy, costly densities in reinforcement learning and ABC.
problem Dealing with intractable, costly, and noisy densities in real-world scenarios.
method Classification and description of Monte Carlo methodologies using surrogate models.
result Unified scheme and numerical comparisons of different methodologies.
Unified view of score estimators for flexible densities.
problem Estimating the score from unknown distributions.
method Regularized nonparametric regression framework.
result Unified convergence analysis and new estimators with desirable properties.
Paper proposes an alternative to set losses for predicting unordered variables without imposing structure.
problem Learning unordered variables with unknown interrelations without imposing structure.
method Viewing set prediction as conditional density estimation and using deep energy-based models with gradient-guided sampling.
result Empirically demonstrates capability to learn multi-modal densities and produce different plausible predictions.
Likelihood-free methods perform parameter inference in stochastic simulator models where evaluating the likelihood is intractable but sampling synthetic data is possible. One class of methods for this likelihood-free problem uses a classifier to distinguish between pairs of parameter-observation samples generated using…
How can one perform Bayesian inference on stochastic simulators with intractable likelihoods? A recent approach is to learn the posterior from adaptively proposed simulations using neural network-based conditional density estimators. However, existing methods are limited to a narrow range of proposal distributions or r…
DGFS improves sampling from complex densities by optimizing partial trajectories.
problem Sampling from intractable high-dimensional density functions.
method DGFS uses a flow function to break down the training process into short partial trajectory segments, leveraging intermediate learning signals.
result DGFS achieves more accurate estimates of the normalization constant.
Bayesian state and parameter estimation for nonlinear models using variational methods.
problem Estimating states and parameters for nonlinear state-space models.
method Variational approach to approximate the intractable Bayesian distribution, resulting in an optimisation problem.
result The proposed method efficiently computes Bayesian estimates for nonlinear models, outperforming Hamiltonian Monte Carlo in numerical examples.
New method trains EBMs using NFs for more accurate likelihood estimation.
problem Lack of statistical accuracy in EBMs likelihood estimation.
method Uses normalizing flows (NF) to fit an NF to an EBM during training.
result Accurate gradient for EBMs at all times, leading to a fast sampler.
Important information concerning a multivariate data set, such as clusters and modal regions, is contained in the derivatives of the probability density function. Despite this importance, nonparametric estimation of higher order derivatives of the density functions have received only relatively scant attention. Kernel …
A new method improves density ratio estimation efficiency and accuracy.
problem Density ratio estimation trade-off between quality and efficiency.
method One-step Score-based Density Ratio Estimation (OS-DRE) combining analytic and solver-free approach.
result OS-DRE offers a favorable balance between estimation quality and inference efficiency.
Making sense of a dataset in an automatic and unsupervised fashion is a challenging problem in statistics and AI. Classical approaches for {exploratory data analysis} are usually not flexible enough to deal with the uncertainty inherent to real-world data: they are often restricted to fixed latent interaction models an…
In nonlinear state-space models, sequential learning about the hidden state can proceed by particle filtering when the density of the observation conditional on the state is available analytically (e.g. Gordon et al., 1993). This condition need not hold in complex environments, such as the incomplete-information equili…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods become increasingly popular in applied mathematics as a tool for numerical integration with respect to complex and high-dimensional distributions. However, application of MCMC methods to heavy tailed distributions and distributions with analytically intractable densities turns out to be…
Paper generalizes tensor-train approximation for complex random variables.
problem Characterizing intractable high-dimensional random variables.
method Extends inverse Rosenblatt transform to general reference measures and integrates into deep variable transformation framework.
result Deep inverse Rosenblatt transport significantly expands tensor approximations for complex random variables.
CEBMs learn flexible latent mappings from data.
problem Learning flexible latent mappings from data.
method CEBMs decompose joint density into tractable posterior over latent variables.
result CEBMs achieve competitive results in image modeling and latent space predictive power.
Score matching is a recently developed parameter learning method that is particularly effective to complicated high dimensional density models with intractable partition functions. In this paper, we study two issues that have not been completely resolved for score matching. First, we provide a formal link between maxim…
FNFs model parameter-dependent densities by combining a fixed flow with a polynomial parameter-dependent transformation.
problem Learning a separate flow for every parameter configuration is intractable.
method Factorizable Normalizing Flows (FNFs) represent the parameter-dependent density as a fixed flow for a reference configuration and a learnable polynomial transformation factorized over parameters.
result FNFs enable the recovery of the combined effect of multiple parameters without sampling their joint space, providing a scalable and interpretable solution.
Several statistical models are given in the form of unnormalized densities, and calculation of the normalization constant is intractable. We propose estimation methods for such unnormalized models with missing data. The key concept is to combine imputation techniques with estimators for unnormalized models including no…
Nonparametric density deconvolution and denoising using simulation-based inference
problem Learning latent signals and their distributions in the presence of measurement noise
method Convolutional maximum mean discrepancy (convMMD) loss and likelihood-free framework
result Learn a latent generative model matching observed data distribution
We present Sequential Neural Likelihood (SNL), a new method for Bayesian inference in simulator models, where the likelihood is intractable but simulating data from the model is possible. SNL trains an autoregressive flow on simulated data in order to learn a model of the likelihood in the region of high posterior dens…
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.
New algorithm tames non-linear growth in stochastic optimization.
problem Computational challenges in E-step of EM framework.
method Employing interacting particle systems and taming techniques to create tIPLA.
result Non-asymptotic convergence error estimates in Wasserstein-2 distance for tIPLA.