We study convergence rates of variational posterior distributions for nonparametric and high-dimensional inference. We formulate general conditions on prior, likelihood, and variational class that characterize the convergence rates. Under similar "prior mass and testing" conditions considered in the literature, the rat…
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48 results for “posterior convergence”
We prove exact BNN posterior convergence to GP limit and provide sampling methods.
problem Theoretical and empirical challenges in obtaining exact posterior distributions of wide BNNs.
method Theoretical proof and rejection sampling for generating exact samples.
result Exact BNN posterior converges to GP limit as width increases.
Rates of Convergence of Generalised Variational Inference Posteriors under Prior Misspecificationmath.ST
Study improves convergence rates for GVI under prior misspecification.
problem Improving convergence rates for GVI under prior misspecification.
method Proves rates of convergence and robustness to prior misspecification in GVI framework.
result Establishes sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness of GVI posteriors.
Empirical Bayes rates via variational approximations and prior decomposition.
problem Nonparametric and high-dimensional inference convergence rates.
method Variational perspective and prior decomposition.
result Empirical Bayes posterior rates derived from variational Bayes.
Bayesian method with Gaussian process priors achieves optimal convergence rates for regression function and its derivatives.
problem Estimating the regression function and its derivatives in nonparametric regression.
method Bayesian approach with Gaussian process priors, focusing on convergence rates and plug-in property.
result Equivalence of convergence rates of posterior distributions and Bayes estimators for regression function and its derivatives.
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have not been broadly adopted in Bayesian neural networks (BNNs). This paper initially reviews the main challenges in sampling from the parameter posterior of a neural network via MCMC. Such challenges culminate to lack of convergence to the parameter posterior. Nevertheless, thi…
We use neural networks to estimate complex model posteriors efficiently.
problem Intractable likelihood functions in complex models.
method Train a neural network to map data to posterior distributions of model parameters.
result Our method converges to true posteriors in Kullback-Leibler divergence.
Gaussian OBFS proves strong consistency in feature selection with correlations.
problem Feature selection consistency in the presence of correlations.
method Proves strong consistency of Gaussian OBFS under mild conditions.
result Identifies selected features and rates of convergence for different feature types.
KL annealing helps VAEs avoid posterior collapse and overfitting.
problem Posterior collapse and overfitting in VAEs.
method Theoretical analysis of learning dynamics with KL annealing.
result Posterior collapse is inevitable when exceeds a threshold.
Elliptical slice sampling converges geometrically, providing reliable sampling for Bayesian learning.
problem Sampling from posterior distributions in Bayesian learning.
method Elliptical slice sampling, geometric ergodicity.
result Elliptical slice sampling yields geometric convergence guarantees under weak regularity assumptions.
Bayesian neural networks ignore data in infinite units limit.
problem Pathological behavior of posterior in over-parameterized networks.
method Mean-field variational inference in infinite hidden units limit.
result Posterior mean converges to zero, ignoring data.
VPR improves posterior uncertainty quantification by combining VI and predictive resampling.
problem Inaccurate posterior sampling with MCMC due to computational constraints.
method Variational predictive resampling (VPR) that uses VI's predictive strength and imputes future observations.
result VPR converges to the exact Bayesian posterior in a Gaussian location model and improves uncertainty quantification.
Compact parameterization improves Bayesian neural network performance.
problem Improving performance of Bayesian neural networks using variational methods.
method Restricting variational distribution to a k-tied Normal distribution with low-rank factorization.
result Compact parameterization improves signal-to-noise ratio and convergence speed.
Enhanced Gaussian process models accelerate optimization and posterior approximation.
problem Improving the accuracy and speed of Gaussian process models for optimization and inference.
method Introduces a random exploration step to classical GP-UCB algorithms, facilitating faster convergence.
result New algorithms achieve nearly optimal convergence rates and provide bounds for Hellinger distance.
Proposes a method to sample from flat basins of posterior distributions in Bayesian deep learning.
problem Sampling from multi-modal posterior distributions leads to overfitting due to trapping in bad modes.
method Introduces an auxiliary guiding variable to bias MCMC sampling towards flat basins of the energy landscape.
result The method converges faster and outperforms existing methods in sampling from flat basins of the posterior.
Gradient boosting can be seen as Gaussian process inference.
problem Improving uncertainty estimates in out-of-domain detection.
method Gradient boosting reformulated as a kernel method converging to Gaussian process inference.
result Gradient boosting can provide better uncertainty estimates through Monte-Carlo estimation of posterior variance.
Bayesian neural network achieves nearly optimal performance in Besov space.
problem Bayesian neural networks in Besov space.
method Spike-and-slab prior and shrinkage prior for posterior convergence rate.
result The posterior convergence rate is nearly minimax and adaptive to unknown smoothness.
ABI bypasses likelihood intractability with nonparametric distribution matching.
problem Approximate Bayesian computation's inefficiency in high-dimensional settings and under diffuse priors.
method Adaptive Bayesian Inference (ABI) compares posterior distributions directly using nonparametric distribution matching and MSW distance.
result ABI significantly outperforms other methods in high-dimensional or dependent observation regimes.
This paper introduces a scalable benchmark for evaluating local posterior sampling in neural networks.
problem Degeneracy in neural network loss landscapes and its impact on SGMCMC algorithms.
method Development of a scalable benchmark for local posterior sampling.
result RMSProp-preconditioned SGLD is most effective at representing the local geometry of the posterior distribution.
Enhances SGLD for log-concave posteriors with asynchronous computation.
problem Sampling log-concave posterior distributions efficiently.
method Integrates asynchronous computation into SGLD with delayed gradients.
result Convergence in measure is not significantly affected by delayed gradient information.
Moving Target Monte Carlostat.CO
New algorithm MTMC reduces MCMC evaluation costs.
problem High-dimensional sampling with intractable posterior evaluations.
method Iteratively updated approximation of posterior distribution for acceptance rate.
result Approximation converges to true posterior as iterations increase.
Leveraging Nested MLMC for Sequential Neural Posterior Estimation with Intractable Likelihoodsstat.CO
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.
Optimized -posteriors reduce KL divergence from true posterior in parametric misspecification.
problem Reduction of KL divergence from true posterior in parametric model misspecification.
method Derivation of Bernstein-von Mises theorem and optimization of -posteriors.
result Optimized -posteriors minimize KL divergence from true posterior, especially in severe misspecification.
One of the core problems in statistical models is the estimation of a posterior distribution. For topic models, the problem of posterior inference for individual texts is particularly important, especially when dealing with data streams, but is often intractable in the worst case. As a consequence, existing methods for…
The posterior variance of Gaussian processes is a valuable measure of the learning error which is exploited in various applications such as safe reinforcement learning and control design. However, suitable analysis of the posterior variance which captures its behavior for finite and infinite number of training data is …
Improved Bayesian inference via variational approximations of generalized rho-posteriors.
problem Robust Bayesian inference under model misspecification and data contamination.
method Introducing a modified -posterior and using PAC-Bayesian analysis with variational approximations.
result Theoretical guarantees for tractable inference with competitive robustness and computational efficiency.
Develops an online Gaussian process method that maintains convergence guarantees without sample complexity issues.
problem The computational intractability of Gaussian processes with streaming data.
method Parsimonious Online Gaussian Processes (POG) that maintains asymptotic consistency with bounded memory.
result POG preserves convergence guarantees to the population posterior with finite memory, even for constant error radius.
We study the asymptotic consistency properties of -Rényi approximate posteriors, a class of variational Bayesian methods that approximate an intractable Bayesian posterior with a member of a tractable family of distributions, the member chosen to minimize the -Rényi divergence from the true posterior. Unique to o…
Guarantees convergence for black-box variational inference without modifications.
problem Convergence guarantees for black-box variational inference.
method Analysis of log-smooth posterior densities, location-scale variational family, and convergence rates of algorithm design choices.
result Proximal stochastic gradient descent fixes suboptimal convergence rates and achieves strongest known guarantees.
Blade uses diffusion priors to accurately and calibratedly infer complex systems.
problem Derivative-free Bayesian inversion for high-dimensional, nonlinear problems with costly forward models.
method Blade employs an ensemble of interacting particles and diffusion models as priors, querying forward models only through evaluations.
result Blade produces well-calibrated posterior samples that existing methods cannot, improving with more iterations and particles.
Normalized random measures (NRMs) provide a broad class of discrete random measures that are often used as priors for Bayesian nonparametric models. Dirichlet process is a well-known example of NRMs. Most of posterior inference methods for NRM mixture models rely on MCMC methods since they are easy to implement and the…
RVI accelerates encoderless VI for faster convergence.
problem Slow convergence in encoderless VI methods.
method Introduces Relay Variational Inference (RVI) for faster learning.
result RVI outperforms existing methods in convergence speed and performance.
Variational inference lies at the core of many state-of-the-art algorithms. To improve the approximation of the posterior beyond parametric families, it was proposed to include MCMC steps into the variational lower bound. In this work we explore this idea using steps of the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm, an e…
This paper proposes a new algorithm for Gaussian process classification based on posterior linearisation (PL). In PL, a Gaussian approximation to the posterior density is obtained iteratively using the best possible linearisation of the conditional mean of the labels and accounting for the linearisation error. PL has s…
New GP methods account for both data and computational uncertainty.
problem Approximation error in Gaussian process models.
method Develops a new class of methods to estimate combined uncertainty.
result Proves convergence and decomposability of combined posterior covariance.
Bayesian neural networks approximate Student-t processes in the infinite-width limit.
problem Modeling uncertainty in neural networks with greater flexibility.
method Extending asymptotic properties of Gaussian processes to Student-t processes in the infinite-width limit of BNNs.
result Posterior BNNs converge to Student-t processes in the infinite-width limit.
Proposes a method to quantify uncertainty in PFNs.
problem Lack of uncertainty quantification in PFNs.
method Martingale posteriors for efficient, tuning-free sampling.
result Proves convergence of proposed sampling procedure.
Boosting Variational Inference improves posterior approximations with adaptive step-sizes.
problem Limited resources hinder the widespread adoption of Boosting Variational Inference.
method Characterized global curvature impact, introduced local curvature, and developed an approximate backtracking algorithm.
result New theoretical convergence rates and experimental validation demonstrate improved performance.
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.
New perspective on federated learning as posterior inference, improving optimization.
problem Optimizing global models in distributed learning settings.
method Formulated as posterior inference problem, using MCMC for approximate inference and federated averaging for refinement.
result Federated posterior averaging (FedPA) outperforms existing methods on benchmarks.
A novel diffusion method for Bayesian posterior sampling with theoretical guarantees.
problem Efficiently sampling from complex posterior distributions in Bayesian inversion.
method Diffusion-based posterior sampling using Langevin dynamics and PnP framework.
result The method converges even for multi-modal posterior distributions with theoretical error bounds.
Statistical inference of analytically non-tractable posteriors is a difficult problem because of marginalization of correlated variables and stochastic methods such as MCMC and VI are commonly used. We argue that stochastic KL divergence minimization used by MCMC and VI is noisy, and we propose instead EL_2O, expectati…
New bounds on neural network convergence using information theory.
problem Quantifying convergence rates of neural networks to Gaussian distributions.
method Entropic inequalities and Gaussian approximations.
result Improved convergence rates in various distances for neural networks.
This paper makes two contributions to Bayesian machine learning algorithms. Firstly, we propose stochastic natural gradient expectation propagation (SNEP), a novel alternative to expectation propagation (EP), a popular variational inference algorithm. SNEP is a black box variational algorithm, in that it does not requi…
This project compares MCMC and VI for Bayesian PMF on MovieLens.
problem Intractable posterior distribution in PMF.
method Employed MCMC and VI for Bayesian inference on MovieLens.
result VI converges faster, MCMC provides more accurate estimates.
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.
BNRE improves simulation-based inference by producing more conservative posteriors.
problem Overconfident posteriors from current simulation-based inference algorithms risk false inferences.
method Balanced Neural Ratio Estimation (BNRE) that produces more conservative posterior approximations.
result BNRE produces more conservative posterior surrogates on all tested benchmarks and simulation budgets.
Advocates for a new posterior that predicts better than classical and generalised Bayes.
problem Combining parameter inference and density estimation for better predictive models.
method Predictively Oriented (PrO) posterior using mean field Langevin dynamics.
result PrO posteriors converge to the predictively optimal model average, adapting to model misspecification.