Inference models are a key component in scaling variational inference to deep latent variable models, most notably as encoder networks in variational auto-encoders (VAEs). By replacing conventional optimization-based inference with a learned model, inference is amortized over data examples and therefore more computatio…
We propose a general formalism of iterated random functions with semigroup property, under which exact and approximate Bayesian posterior updates can be viewed as specific instances. A convergence theory for iterated random functions is presented. As an application of the general theory we analyze convergence behaviors…
This paper speeds up iterative GP inference with warm starting.
problem Improving scalability of Gaussian process inference.
method Warm starting sequential posteriors using known solutions.
result Significant speed-ups and improved Bayesian optimisation performance.
We develop a privatised stochastic variational inference method for Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). The iterative nature of stochastic variational inference presents challenges: multiple iterations are required to obtain accurate posterior distributions, yet each iteration increases the amount of noise that must be …
Unified reinforcement learning methods using hybrid inference.
problem Combining model-based and model-free reinforcement learning approaches.
method Control as Hybrid Inference (CHI) framework.
result CHI algorithm balances model-based and model-free learning.
The paper reclassifies RL algorithms using inference concepts.
problem To provide a unified perspective on RL algorithms.
method Using the control as inference framework, the paper classifies RL algorithms as amortised and iterative inference.
result A wide range of RL algorithms can be classified in this new manner.
Method infers dynamics from incomplete time series data.
problem Challenges in inferring stochastic dynamics from time series with missing data.
method Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm that iterates between E-step and M-step.
result The EM algorithm effectively recovers missing data points and infers underlying network models from real neuronal activities.
The mean field variational Bayes method is becoming increasingly popular in statistics and machine learning. Its iterative Coordinate Ascent Variational Inference algorithm has been widely applied to large scale Bayesian inference. See Blei et al. (2017) for a recent comprehensive review. Despite the popularity of the …
FHBI enhances generalization in Bayesian inference with iterative steps in functional spaces.
problem Improving generalization in Bayesian inference models.
method Iterative two-step procedure with adversarial and functional descent steps in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space.
result FHBI consistently outperforms nine baseline methods on the VTAB-1K benchmark.
Paper characterizes gradient descent in high-dimensional learning problems.
problem Understanding gradient descent dynamics in high-dimensional statistical learning.
method Non-asymptotic joint distributional characterization of gradient descent iterates and debiased statistics.
result Gradient descent iterates approximate normality after debiasing correction.
WaveFit uses fixed-point iteration to create high-quality neural vocoders.
problem Creating high-quality neural vocoders with fast inference.
method Integrates GANs' adversarial training into a DDPM-like iterative framework based on fixed-point iteration.
result WaveFit synthesizes speech with naturalness comparable to human speech, and is significantly faster than existing methods.
Unified framework for AMP iterations using graph indexing.
problem Complex high-dimensional statistical inference problems.
method Graph-based indexing of AMP iterations, modular proof of state evolution.
result Unified SE equations for AMP iterations indexed by graphs.
New method solves constrained stochastic optimization problems efficiently.
problem Online statistical inference of constrained stochastic nonlinear optimization problems.
method Stochastic Sequential Quadratic Programming (StoSQP) with iterative sketching solver.
result The rescaled primal-dual sequence converges to a mean-zero Gaussian distribution.
Traditional learning methods for training Markov random fields require doing inference over all variables to compute the likelihood gradient. The iteration complexity for those methods therefore scales with the size of the graphical models. In this paper, we propose \emph{block belief propagation learning} (BBPL), whic…
We propose a novel method for maximum likelihood-based parameter inference in nonlinear and/or non-Gaussian state space models. The method is an iterative procedure with three steps. At each iteration a particle filter is used to estimate the value of the log-likelihood function at the current parameter iterate. Using …
The paper analyzes SGD with dropout regularization in linear models, proving asymptotic properties and providing inference tools.
problem Analyzing the behavior of SGD with dropout regularization in linear models.
method Establishing geometric-moment contraction (GMC) and proving quenched central limit theorems (CLT).
result The existence of a unique stationary distribution and asymptotic normality results for SGD with dropout.
GENESIS-V2 infers unordered object representations without iterative refinement.
problem Unsupervised learning of unordered object representations for complex images.
method Stochastic stick-breaking process for clustering pixel embeddings.
result GENESIS-V2 outperforms recent baselines in unsupervised image segmentation and scene generation.
A new method approximates posterior for VAEs without iterative training.
problem Inference models in VAEs are poor early on, leading to suboptimal models.
method Train generative and inference models independently, using a model-agnostic posterior approximation (MAPA).
result MAPA approximates the true posterior deterministically and can improve density estimation.
Bayesian inference improves neural network pruning efficiency.
problem Reducing computational and memory demands of large neural networks.
method Utilizes Bayesian inference to calculate Bayes factors for iterative pruning.
result Achieves desired levels of sparsity while maintaining competitive accuracy.
The mean field algorithm is a widely used approximate inference algorithm for graphical models whose exact inference is intractable. In each iteration of mean field, the approximate marginals for each variable are updated by getting information from the neighbors. This process can be equivalently converted into a feedf…
New method improves image compression using bits-back coding.
problem Lossy image compression with deep latent variable models.
method Iterative inference, stochastic annealing, bits-back coding.
result New state-of-the-art performance on lossy image compression.
Likelihood-free inference is concerned with the estimation of the parameters of a non-differentiable stochastic simulator that best reproduce real observations. In the absence of a likelihood function, most of the existing inference methods optimize the simulator parameters through a handcrafted iterative procedure tha…
The paper develops time-uniform inference methods for stochastic approximation parameters.
problem Statistical inference for parameters in stochastic approximation problems.
method Analysis of averaged iterates convergence rates and construction of asymptotic confidence sequences.
result Valid asymptotic confidence sequences for parameters in stochastic approximation problems.
Improves inference-time alignment for diffusion models without updating weights.
problem Aligning diffusion models without updating weights for high-reward outputs.
method Trust-Region Iterative Twisted Sequential Monte Carlo (TRI-TSMC) for variance reduction and efficiency.
result Improves primary alignment objectives on text generation tasks.
We propose a recurrent extension of the Ladder networks whose structure is motivated by the inference required in hierarchical latent variable models. We demonstrate that the recurrent Ladder is able to handle a wide variety of complex learning tasks that benefit from iterative inference and temporal modeling. The arch…
The paper improves matrix completion with auxiliary covariates using LS estimation.
problem Matrix completion with noisy data and auxiliary covariates.
method Iterative least squares estimation with statistical properties derived.
result Asymptotic normal distributions of estimators for low-rank matrix and coefficient matrix.
DSVGD improves federated learning with fewer communication rounds.
problem Federated learning scalability and trustworthiness.
method Distributed Stein Variational Gradient Descent (DSVGD) for non-parametric Bayesian inference.
result DSVGD achieves comparable accuracy and scalability to other methods, with well-calibrated predictions.
A new method for math reasoning that allows for iterative correction.
problem Standard reasoning models commit to each token and cannot recover from early errors.
method Generative framework with latent thought vectors for iterative self-correction.
result 30 rethinking iterations surpass baselines with 15 times more parameters.
Warm-start strategies speed up GP inference by 19x.
problem Efficient sequential inference in Gaussian processes.
method Three warm-start strategies exploiting smaller linear systems.
result Warm-starting achieves up to 19x speed-up in convergence.
New variational inference approach using Hilbert space for robotic state estimation.
problem Robotic state estimation with high-dimensional data.
method Variational inference reformulated in a Bayesian Hilbert space, using iterative projection.
result Variational inference can be seen as iterative projection in Euclidean space.
A novel framework refines diffusion models iteratively for better downstream reward optimization.
problem Optimizing reward functions during inference of diffusion models.
method Iterative refinement process with noising and reward-guided denoising steps.
result Superior empirical performance in protein and DNA design.
A fast MCMC sampler for sparse Bayesian inference.
problem Sparse Bayesian inference problems with high computational cost.
method Asynchronous Gibbs sampler extended with data sub-sampling.
result The Markov chain admits an invariant distribution that recovers the main signal with high probability.
Given a graph where every node has certain attributes associated with it and some nodes have labels associated with them, Collective Classification (CC) is the task of assigning labels to every unlabeled node using information from the node as well as its neighbors. It is often the case that a node is not only influenc…
New method speeds up Gaussian process training and inference for large datasets.
problem Training and inference in Gaussian processes are computationally expensive for large datasets.
method Iterative alternating projection method that accesses subblocks of the kernel matrix, reducing time and space complexity.
result Empirically, the method accelerates GP training and inference by up to 72x compared to conjugate gradients.
The paper challenges the belief that more inner iterations at test time improve performance in implicit deep learning.
problem The performance improvement of implicit deep learning models with increased inner iterations at test time.
method Theoretical analysis of a simple setting, validation on implicit deep learning problems.
result Overparametrization plays a key role; increasing the number of iterations at test time does not improve performance for overparametrized networks.
We propose a black-box variational inference method to approximate intractable distributions with an increasingly rich approximating class. Our method, termed variational boosting, iteratively refines an existing variational approximation by solving a sequence of optimization problems, allowing the practitioner to trad…
CMCD sampler connects transport and variational inference for efficient sampling.
problem Efficient sampling and generative modeling in Bayesian computation.
method Developed a principled framework using divergences on path space, CMCD sampler with adaptive dynamics.
result CMCD sampler outperforms competing approaches across various experiments.
ASPIRE improves amortized posterior inference for Bayesian inverse problems.
problem Bayesian inverse problems are computationally challenging due to uncertainty quantification.
method Iterative refinement of amortized posteriors using physics-based and summary statistics.
result ASPIRE achieves better posterior approximations with minimal extra computations.
Modern statistical inference tasks often require iterative optimization methods to compute the solution. Convergence analysis from an optimization viewpoint only informs us how well the solution is approximated numerically but overlooks the sampling nature of the data. In contrast, recognizing the randomness in the dat…
New insights into using IPF for inferring dynamic networks from marginals.
problem Inferring dynamic networks from time-aggregated adjacency matrices and time-varying marginals.
method Identifying a generative network model and establishing its maximum likelihood estimates via IPF, with convergence guarantees for sparse data.
result IPF provides principled estimation of dynamic networks from marginals under certain conditions, with structure-dependent error bounds and guaranteed convergence for sparse data.
In this paper, we present a Bayesian channel estimation algorithm for multicarrier receivers based on pilot symbol observations. The inherent sparse nature of wireless multipath channels is exploited by modeling the prior distribution of multipath components' gains with a hierarchical representation of the Bessel K pro…
Rotates MFVI for better Gaussian approximations.
problem Improving variational approximations for complex distributions.
method Rotated coordinate system, PCA-based rotation, iterative Gaussianization.
result Significantly more accurate approximations with lower computational cost.
A new algorithm reconstructs population dynamics from coarse samples.
problem Reconstructing population dynamics from unlabeled samples at coarse time intervals.
method Deep Momentum Multi-Marginal Schrödinger Bridge (DMSB) framework.
result Significantly outperforms baselines in synthetic and real-world datasets.
A new recursive mixture estimation algorithm improves VAE inference efficiency and accuracy.
problem Inaccurate posterior approximation in traditional VAEs.
method Recursive mixture estimation algorithm using functional gradient approach for iterative component selection.
result Significantly higher test data likelihood compared to state-of-the-art methods on benchmark datasets.
A new method corrects bias in high-dimensional ridge regression.
problem Inherent bias in ridge regression limits statistical efficiency and scalability.
method Iterative bias correction strategy for p<n and Ridge-Screening method for p>n. result Valid inferences and asymptotic properties established for de-biased ridge estimators.
New bounds for SGD in high dimensions improve inference efficiency.
problem Quantifying uncertainty in high-dimensional SGD.
method Established non-asymptotic Berry--Esseen bounds for online least-squares SGD.
result Gaussian Central Limit Theorem holds for t≳d1+δ, extending dimensional scaling. Generative model improves sample quality on ImageNet32.
problem Improving sample quality in generative models.
method Iterative Gaussian posterior inference, treating generated sample as unknown variable.
result Improves sample quality on ImageNet32 over BFNs and VDMs.
This paper analyzes Local SGD for federated learning, achieving both statistical and communication efficiency.
problem Statistical estimation and inference in federated learning with decentralized data.
method Local SGD, a multi-round estimation procedure using intermittent communication.
result Local SGD achieves both statistical efficiency and communication efficiency.