SMC methods approximate intractable Bayesian inference.
problem Approximating intractable Bayesian inference.
method Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods.
result SMC can approximate intractable expectations and normalizing constants.
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.
Action-BED: Task-Driven Bayesian Experimental Design
problem Bayesian experimental design with doubly intractable objectives
method Formulating BED in terms of expected future loss (EFL) and optimising it with stochastic gradients
result Simplified and task-driven framework for BED
Develops an efficient approximation for collapsed Gibbs sampling in complex models.
problem Intractability of integrating out variables in collapsed Gibbs sampling for complex models.
method Uses expectation propagation to approximate collapsed Gibbs integrals.
result Approximate sampler enables a runtime-accuracy tradeoff in sampling complex 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.
Bayesian design improves by reducing policy training cost.
problem Double intractability in expected information gain limits policy learning.
method Score matching to isolate EIG, then train policy singly intractably.
result Reduced computational burden for policy training, allowing multiple iterations.
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.
Efficient Bayesian decision-making with intractable likelihoods.
problem Bayesian decision-making under intractable likelihoods.
method Learning surrogate models and using simulation-based inference and Bayesian optimization.
result Optimal actions can be learned with fewer simulations than posterior inference.
This paper solves robust utility maximization with unknown claim dependencies.
problem Investor optimizes utility in the presence of an intractable contingent claim.
method Quantile optimization approach, transforming dynamic problem into static concave optimization.
result Optimal payoffs depend on ambiguity attitude, market conditions, and claim characteristics.
Investor maximizes utility from an unknown claim using robust optimization.
problem Maximizing utility from an unknown contingent claim.
method Robust optimization with quantile formulation and variational inequalities.
result Optimal trading strategy and utility indifference price determined.
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.
Paper proposes using expectation models for planning in stochastic environments.
problem Intractability of learning distribution and sample models in large state and action spaces.
method Proposes using approximate expectation models for MBRL, analyzes linear and non-linear parametrizations, and presents a policy evaluation algorithm.
result Planning with an expectation model is equivalent to planning with a distribution model under certain conditions.
A large number of statistical models are "doubly-intractable": the likelihood normalising term, which is a function of the model parameters, is intractable, as well as the marginal likelihood (model evidence). This means that standard inference techniques to sample from the posterior, such as Markov chain Monte Carlo (…
Improves accuracy of SMCI estimators without expanding sum regions.
problem Intractable multiple summations in evaluating expectations on the Ising model.
method Combining multiple SMCI estimators using generalized least squares (GLS).
result The proposed method can improve accuracy without combinatorial explosion.
Paper establishes DRL for high-dimensional rewards.
problem Intractable reinforcement learning with high-dimensional rewards.
method Theoretical foundations and a novel DRL algorithm.
result Bellman operator contraction in high-dimensional spaces.
Loss-calibrated EP improves Bayesian decision-making by focusing on utility-sensitive posterior approximations.
problem Bayesian decision-making under asymmetric utility functions.
method Loss-calibrated expectation propagation (Loss-EP) that tilts the posterior towards higher utility decisions.
result Loss-EP can capture useful information for decision-making under asymmetric penalties.
Doubly SGD improves convergence for intractable objective optimization.
problem Optimizing objectives in sum of intractable expectations.
method Doubly SGD with doubly stochastic gradients and independent minibatching.
result Established convergence of doubly SGD under general conditions, including dependent component gradient estimators.
CEP improves inference efficiency and accuracy by conditional moment matching.
problem Intractable moment matching in EP.
method Conditional expectation propagation (CEP) performs conditional moment matching and expectation.
result CEP achieves better inference quality and efficiency.
This paper studies the problem of parameter learning in probabilistic graphical models having latent variables, where the standard approach is the expectation maximization algorithm alternating expectation (E) and maximization (M) steps. However, both E and M steps are computationally intractable for high dimensional d…
Exact inference in the linear regression model with spike and slab priors is often intractable. Expectation propagation (EP) can be used for approximate inference. However, the regular sequential form of EP (R-EP) may fail to converge in this model when the size of the training set is very small. As an alternative, we …
A new method for inferring latent states in Markov jump processes.
problem Intractable exact inference for Markov jump processes.
method Entropic matching within expectation propagation.
result Superior performance in approximating the mean of the posterior process.
We propose a novel information-theoretic approach for Bayesian optimization called Predictive Entropy Search (PES). At each iteration, PES selects the next evaluation point that maximizes the expected information gained with respect to the global maximum. PES codifies this intractable acquisition function in terms of t…
Bayesian quadrature uses probabilistic models for estimating intractable integrals.
problem Estimating intractable integrals in complex models.
method Probabilistic, model-based approach using Gaussian processes.
result Comprehensive review and systematic taxonomy of Bayesian quadrature methods.
This work uses a scalable approach to identify partially observed nonlinear systems.
problem Offline identification of partially observed nonlinear systems.
method Certainty-equivalent expectation-maximization (CEEM) as block coordinate-ascent.
result The CEEM approach can identify high-dimensional systems reliably and efficiently.
It is now well established empirically that financial price changes are distributed according to a power law, with cubic exponent. This is a fascinating regularity, as it holds for various classes of securities, on various markets, and on various time scales. The universality of this law suggests that there must be som…
Efficiently designs experiments without integrating posterior distributions.
problem Computational inefficiency in Bayesian experimental design for PDE-based models.
method Likelihood-free approach using ANN to approximate conditional expectation.
result Significant reduction in observation model evaluations.
We consider the problem of estimating the expected value of information (the knowledge gradient) for Bayesian learning problems where the belief model is nonlinear in the parameters. Our goal is to maximize some metric, while simultaneously learning the unknown parameters of the nonlinear belief model, by guiding a seq…
Stochastic EM with biased MCMC improves inference stability.
problem Intractable E-step in EM algorithm.
method Stochastic approximation with biased MCMC.
result ULA is more stable and sometimes faster than MALA.
Structured prediction tasks in machine learning involve the simultaneous prediction of multiple labels. This is typically done by maximizing a score function on the space of labels, which decomposes as a sum of pairwise elements, each depending on two specific labels. Intuitively, the more pairwise terms are used, the …
We introduce supervised latent Dirichlet allocation (sLDA), a statistical model of labelled documents. The model accommodates a variety of response types. We derive an approximate maximum-likelihood procedure for parameter estimation, which relies on variational methods to handle intractable posterior expectations. Pre…
Paper solves NP-hard sparse mixed linear regression problem with provable guarantees.
problem Sparse mixed linear regression on unlabeled data.
method Invex relaxation for intractable problem with theoretical guarantees.
result Exact recovery of data labels and close approximation of regression parameters.
Expectation propagation (EP) is a deterministic approximation algorithm that is often used to perform approximate Bayesian parameter learning. EP approximates the full intractable posterior distribution through a set of local approximations that are iteratively refined for each datapoint. EP can offer analytic and comp…
New method reduces variance in estimating PL model expectations.
problem High variance in Monte Carlo estimates of PL model expectations.
method Combining Gumbel top-k trick with quasi-Monte Carlo sampling.
result More sample-efficient estimators of PL model expectations.
New method boosts BOED using SBI and neural likelihood.
problem Maximizing EIG in BOED with intractable likelihood.
method Neural likelihood estimation, multi-start gradient ascent.
result Significantly improved BOED performance over state-of-the-art.
Bayesian inference for models that have an intractable partition function is known as a doubly intractable problem, where standard Monte Carlo methods are not applicable. The past decade has seen the development of auxiliary variable Monte Carlo techniques (Møller et al., 2006; Murray et al., 2006) for tackling this pr…
In the Bayesian approach to sequential decision making, exact calculation of the (subjective) utility is intractable. This extends to most special cases of interest, such as reinforcement learning problems. While utility bounds are known to exist for this problem, so far none of them were particularly tight. In this pa…
We propose a second-order (Hessian or Hessian-free) based optimization method for variational inference inspired by Gaussian backpropagation, and argue that quasi-Newton optimization can be developed as well. This is accomplished by generalizing the gradient computation in stochastic backpropagation via a reparametriza…
We propose an expectation-maximization-like(EMlike) method to train Boltzmann machine with unconstrained connectivity. It adopts Monte Carlo approximation in the E-step, and replaces the intractable likelihood objective with efficiently computed objectives or directly approximates the gradient of likelihood objective i…
A new method improves inference for complex Bayesian models.
problem Bayesian inference for doubly intractable distributions is computationally challenging.
method Monte Carlo Stein variational gradient descent (MC-SVGD) approach.
result The method achieves substantial computational gains over existing algorithms.
Bayesian inference uses Stein discrepancy for robustness in intractable likelihoods.
problem Intractable likelihoods in Bayesian inference.
method Generalised Bayesian inference with Stein discrepancy as the loss function.
result Robust generalised posteriors with closed form or accessible using MCMC.
Efficiently optimizes expensive functions with multi-step lookahead using one-shot optimization.
problem Optimizing expensive functions with long-term impacts using myopic approaches.
method Formulated as nested optimization problems within a multi-step scenario tree, optimized in one-shot fashion.
result Multi-step expected improvement is computationally tractable and outperforms existing methods.
This paper bridges statistical and machine learning approaches to variational inference.
problem Statisticians struggle to understand variational inference from a Frequentist perspective.
method Explains VI, VAEs, and DDMs from a Frequentist viewpoint, starting with EM.
result VI emerges as a scalable solution for intractable E-steps in VAEs and DDMs.
Two-Timescale EM Methods improve EM for nonconvex models.
problem Nonconvex latent variable models are challenging for EM.
method Two-stage stochastic updates to handle nonconvex optimization.
result Global convergence for nonconvex objective functions.
Bayesian calibration for BCP self-assembly models using image data and measure transport.
problem Calibrating models of BCP self-assembly from image data with aleatory uncertainty.
method Likelihood-free inference via measure transport and summary statistics.
result Expected information gains can be computed efficiently for model calibration.
Novel MCMC method tackles intractable likelihoods using learned ratio estimators.
problem Posterior inference with intractable likelihoods in complex simulations.
method Amortized approximate ratio estimator embedded in MCMC samplers.
result Effective approximation of likelihood-ratios for sampling from intractable posterior.
We improve stochastic gradient estimators for large categories using Rao-Blackwellization.
problem Computing gradients over large or infinite categories.
method Rao-Blackwellization to reduce variance of stochastic gradient estimators.
result Improves performance on semi-supervised classification and pixel attention tasks.
A new MCMC method tackles doubly intractable posterior problems.
problem Sampling from complicated distributions with doubly intractable posterior.
method Multi-armed Bandit MCMC (MABMC) algorithm.
result MABMC achieves higher average acceptance probability than existing methods.
We propose to prune a random forest (RF) for resource-constrained prediction. We first construct a RF and then prune it to optimize expected feature cost & accuracy. We pose pruning RFs as a novel 0-1 integer program with linear constraints that encourages feature re-use. We establish total unimodularity of the constra…