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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.

168,742 papers · 148 categories

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48 results for kernel probabilistic programming

New tools for uncertainty in dynamical systems without distribution assumptions.

problem Uncertainty representation in dynamical systems without distributional assumptions.
method Kernel mean embedding and kernel probabilistic programming.
result Distribution-free representation, comparison, and propagation of uncertainties.

Bayesian approach models neurodegenerative diseases without clinical labels.

problem Personalized, predictive modeling of neurodegenerative diseases.
method Probabilistic programmed deep kernel learning combining Gaussian processes and neural networks.
result Surpasses deep learning in accuracy and timeliness of predicting neurodegeneration.

Develops inference combinators for probabilistic programs using neural networks.

problem Creating efficient proposals for probabilistic program inference.
method Inference combinators using neural network parameterization of proposals.
result Correct by construction variational methods tailored to specific models.

Probabilistic techniques are central to data analysis, but different approaches can be difficult to apply, combine, and compare. This paper introduces composable generative population models (CGPMs), a computational abstraction that extends directed graphical models and can be used to describe and compose a broad class…

2016-08-18abs ↗pdf ↗

There is a widespread need for techniques that can discover structure from time series data. Recently introduced techniques such as Automatic Bayesian Covariance Discovery (ABCD) provide a way to find structure within a single time series by searching through a space of covariance kernels that is generated using a simp…

2016-11-21abs ↗pdf ↗

PClean automates Bayesian data cleaning for specific datasets.

problem Bayesian inference for diverse and complex data cleaning.
method Domain-specific probabilistic programming language with custom models and inference.
result PClean programs outperform general-purpose PPLs in accuracy and runtime.

We propose design guidelines for a probabilistic programming facility suitable for deployment as a part of a production software system. As a reference implementation, we introduce Infergo, a probabilistic programming facility for Go, a modern programming language of choice for server-side software development. We argu…

2019-06-20abs ↗pdf ↗

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 develop a technique for generalising from data in which models are samplers represented as program text. We establish encouraging empirical results that suggest that Markov chain Monte Carlo probabilistic programming inference techniques coupled with higher-order probabilistic programming languages are now sufficien…

2014-07-09abs ↗pdf ↗

Forward inference techniques such as sequential Monte Carlo and particle Markov chain Monte Carlo for probabilistic programming can be implemented in any programming language by creative use of standardized operating system functionality including processes, forking, mutexes, and shared memory. Exploiting this we have …

2014-03-03abs ↗pdf ↗

Probabilistic programming is a powerful abstraction for statistical machine learning. Applying static analysis methods to probabilistic programs could serve to optimize the learning process, automatically verify properties of models, and improve the programming interface for users. This field of static analysis for pro…

2019-09-10abs ↗pdf ↗

MultiVerse uses importance sampling for efficient causal reasoning in probabilistic programming.

problem Efficient causal reasoning in probabilistic models, especially counterfactual inference.
method Native implementation of importance sampling in probabilistic programming, optimizing inference through query structure.
result Significant optimisation of inference process through careful design choices and query structure consideration.

New method reduces infinite variance in probabilistic programs with rejection sampling.

problem Infinite variance in naive importance sampling for programs with rejection sampling.
method Developed a new amortized importance sampling estimator with finite variance proof.
result Empirically demonstrated efficiency and correctness compared to existing alternatives.

This work offers a broad perspective on probabilistic modeling and inference in light of recent advances in probabilistic programming, in which models are formally expressed in Turing-complete programming languages. We consider a typical workflow and how probabilistic programming languages can help to automate this wor…

2018-10-02abs ↗pdf ↗

This book is a graduate-level introduction to probabilistic programming. It not only provides a thorough background for anyone wishing to use a probabilistic programming system, but also introduces the techniques needed to design and build these systems. It is aimed at people who have an undergraduate-level understandi…

2018-09-27abs ↗pdf ↗

Probabilistic programming languages represent complex data with intermingled models in a few lines of code. Efficient inference algorithms in probabilistic programming languages make possible to build unified frameworks to compute interesting probabilities of various large, real-world problems. When the structure of mo…

2016-07-04abs ↗pdf ↗

New method for efficient probabilistic inference using masked language modeling.

problem Efficient posterior inference in probabilistic programs with many hyper-parameters.
method Formulate inference as masked language modeling, train a neural network to unmask random values.
result Foundation posterior for zero-shot inference and fine-tuning across a range of programs.

We extend probabilistic programming to handle conditioning on marginal distributions.

problem Conditioning probabilistic programs on marginal distributions of observable variables.
method We define and implement stochastic conditioning, allowing inference in probabilistic programs conditioned on marginal distributions.
result We demonstrate the effectiveness of stochastic conditioning in various real-life scenarios.

In this work, we explore how probabilistic programs can be used to represent policies in sequential decision problems. In this formulation, a probabilistic program is a black-box stochastic simulator for both the problem domain and the agent. We relate classic policy gradient techniques to recently introduced black-box…

2015-07-16abs ↗pdf ↗

A new method for efficient inference in probabilistic programs with mixed support.

problem Challenges in inference for programs with both continuous and discrete latent variables.
method Stochastic gradient Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms.
result Outperforms existing composing inference baselines and works almost as well as inference in marginalized versions.

Probabilistic inference procedures are usually coded painstakingly from scratch, for each target model and each inference algorithm. We reduce this effort by generating inference procedures from models automatically. We make this code generation modular by decomposing inference algorithms into reusable program-to-progr…

2016-03-06abs ↗pdf ↗

UM trains a neural network to approximate marginal distributions in probabilistic programs.

problem High computational cost and lack of theoretical guarantees in inference methods for probabilistic programs.
method Combining samples from a probabilistic program prior with an augmentation method to train a neural network for any conditional marginal distribution.
result UM trains a single neural network to approximate any conditional marginal distribution, amortizing inference costs.

We introduce an approximate search algorithm for fast maximum a posteriori probability estimation in probabilistic programs, which we call Bayesian ascent Monte Carlo (BaMC). Probabilistic programs represent probabilistic models with varying number of mutually dependent finite, countable, and continuous random variable…

2015-04-26abs ↗pdf ↗

Pyro is a probabilistic programming language built on Python as a platform for developing advanced probabilistic models in AI research. To scale to large datasets and high-dimensional models, Pyro uses stochastic variational inference algorithms and probability distributions built on top of PyTorch, a modern GPU-accele…

2018-10-18abs ↗pdf ↗

NP-HMC extends HMC for nonparametric models in probabilistic programming.

problem Inference for nonparametric models in probabilistic programming.
method Introduces NP-HMC, a generalization of HMC for nonparametric models using tree representable functions.
result Empirically shows significant performance improvements over existing approaches.

We introduce a method for using deep neural networks to amortize the cost of inference in models from the family induced by universal probabilistic programming languages, establishing a framework that combines the strengths of probabilistic programming and deep learning methods. We call what we do "compilation of infer…

2016-10-31abs ↗pdf ↗

Probabilistic modeling enables combining domain knowledge with learning from data, thereby supporting learning from fewer training instances than purely data-driven methods. However, learning probabilistic models is difficult and has not achieved the level of performance of methods such as deep neural networks on many …

2017-05-15abs ↗pdf ↗

Particle Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques rank among current state-of-the-art methods for probabilistic program inference. A drawback of these techniques is that they rely on importance resampling, which results in degenerate particle trajectories and a low effective sample size for variables sampled early in a prog…

2015-01-27abs ↗pdf ↗

Guaranteed bounds for posterior inference in probabilistic programs.

problem Approximating the posterior distribution of probabilistic programs with provable correctness.
method Interval-based trace semantics, soundness and completeness proofs, weight-aware interval type system.
result Guaranteed bounds on the posterior distribution of probabilistic programs are computed and proven to be correct.

This abstract extends on the previous work (arXiv:1407.2646, arXiv:1606.00075) on program induction using probabilistic programming. It describes possible further steps to extend that work, such that, ultimately, automatic probabilistic program synthesis can generalise over any reasonable set of inputs and outputs, in …

2018-10-02abs ↗pdf ↗

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is arguably the dominant statistical inference algorithm used in most popular "first-order differentiable" Probabilistic Programming Languages (PPLs). However, the fact that HMC uses derivative information causes complications when the target distribution is non-differentiable with respect…

2018-04-07abs ↗pdf ↗

Probabilistic programming allows specification of probabilistic models in a declarative manner. Recently, several new software systems and languages for probabilistic programming have been developed on the basis of newly developed and improved methods for approximate inference in probabilistic models. In this contribut…

2013-06-02abs ↗pdf ↗

Gaussian Processes (GPs) are widely used tools in statistics, machine learning, robotics, computer vision, and scientific computation. However, despite their popularity, they can be difficult to apply; all but the simplest classification or regression applications require specification and inference over complex covari…

2015-12-17abs ↗pdf ↗

Unified framework for learning flexible probabilistic programs using DPP and PAC-Bayes bounds.

problem Learning and generalizing from complex probabilistic models.
method Unified DPP representation and PAC-Bayes bounds for stochastic programs.
result Improved performance and generalization prediction using flexible DPP model representations and learned complexity measures.

Many practical techniques for probabilistic inference require a sequence of distributions that interpolate between a tractable distribution and an intractable distribution of interest. Usually, the sequences used are simple, e.g., based on geometric averages between distributions. When models are expressed as probabili…

2015-09-09abs ↗pdf ↗

We introduce and demonstrate a new approach to inference in expressive probabilistic programming languages based on particle Markov chain Monte Carlo. Our approach is simple to implement and easy to parallelize. It applies to Turing-complete probabilistic programming languages and supports accurate inference in models …

2015-07-03abs ↗pdf ↗