New method improves sample-efficiency in neural posterior estimation using simulator gradients.
problem High-fidelity posterior estimation with complex physical simulations is time-consuming.
method Neural Posterior Estimation (NPE) with differentiable simulators and gradient information.
result Improves sample-efficiency in posterior density estimation.
Efficiently estimates marginal posteriors for complex simulations.
problem Bayesian inference in high-dimensional, intractable likelihood scenarios.
method Simulates and estimates low-dimensional marginal posteriors, using truncated indicators.
result Simulator efficiency and robustness testing of inference results.
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.
Simulation-based inference methods can produce unreliable posterior approximations.
problem Reliability of simulation-based inference methods for scientific use cases.
method Benchmarked algorithms including Neural Posterior Estimation, Neural Ratio Estimation, Sequential Neural Likelihood, and Approximate Bayesian Computation.
result Ensembling posterior surrogates provides more reliable approximations.
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.
Preconditioned neural posterior estimation improves reliability in misspecified models.
problem Reliability issues in neural posterior estimation for misspecified models.
method Preconditioning with data-dependent weights and forest-proximity scores to stabilize and improve accuracy.
result Preconditioned robust neural posterior estimation increases stability and accuracy over standard methods.
This work extends balancing to various simulation-based inference algorithms for more conservative posterior approximations.
problem Overconfident posterior approximations in simulation-based inference.
method Introduces a balanced version of neural posterior estimation and contrastive neural ratio estimation.
result Balanced versions tend to produce conservative posterior approximations on various benchmarks.
FMCPE improves SBI accuracy by correcting posterior estimators with flow matching.
problem Model misspecification in SBI leads to biased or overconfident posteriors.
method Flow Matching Corrected Posterior Estimation (FMCPE) trains a posterior approximator and corrects it using calibration samples.
result FMCPE consistently mitigates misspecification effects, improving inference accuracy and uncertainty quantification.
Accelerates pulsar light curve inference with learned representations and optimization.
problem Computational expense of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for posterior inference.
method Combining U-Net latent representations with local simulator-guided optimization.
result 120x reduction in inference time (24 hours to 12 minutes) with accuracy preserved.
Method trains neural network for optimal decisions from stochastic simulators.
problem Suboptimal decisions from SBI approximations of posterior distributions.
method Trains neural network on simulated data to predict optimal actions.
result Induces similar cost as true posterior for optimal actions.
DRO-NPE improves neural posterior estimation by reducing overconfidence and overfitting.
problem Overconfident and unreliable posteriors in simulation-based inference with limited simulation budgets.
method Distributionally robust approach using Wasserstein ambiguity set and KL-based metrics.
result Consistently improves coverage and calibration across benchmark tasks.
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…
ConDiSim uses diffusion models to approximate complex system posteriors efficiently.
problem Simulation-based inference of systems with intractable likelihoods.
method Conditional diffusion model with forward and reverse processes.
result Effective posterior approximation across various benchmark and real-world problems.
A new method combines scores of individual observations to efficiently approximate posterior distributions.
problem Handling posterior distributions conditioned on multiple observations with neural methods.
method Conditional score modeling to combine learned scores from individual observations.
result Sample-efficient method that can aggregate multiple observations at inference time.
Improved inference efficiency for complex simulations.
problem Challenges in performing inference under resource-intensive stochastic simulators.
method Active sequential neural posterior estimation (ASNPE) integrating active learning into posterior estimation.
result Improved sample efficiency with low computational overhead.
This paper introduces NPR, a technique to improve Bayesian inference for multi-modal, high-dimensional simulations.
problem Challenges in Bayesian inference for multi-modal, high-dimensional simulations.
method Introduces Neural Posterior Regularization (NPR) to enforce exploration of input parameter space.
result Empirically validated that NPR significantly improves performance on various simulation tasks.
Simulation-free VI closes the approximation gap in latent SDEs
problem Recovering dynamical systems from noisy observations
method Helmholtz-SDE
result Recovers dynamics more faithfully than prior methods
Many statistical models can be simulated forwards but have intractable likelihoods. Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) methods are used to infer properties of these models from data. Traditionally these methods approximate the posterior over parameters by conditioning on data being inside an ε-ball around the obs…
NQE uses quantile regression for fast SBI with cubic Hermite splines.
problem Efficient Bayesian inference for complex models with limited data.
method Neural Quantile Estimation (NQE) learns quantiles autoregressively and interpolates them using cubic Hermite splines.
result NQE achieves state-of-the-art performance on various benchmark problems.
New method improves neural posterior estimation for simulators.
problem Model misspecification in simulation data.
method Robust Neural Posterior Estimation (RNPE) to handle discrepancies.
result Naive NPE leads to unreliable inference, RNPE performs well.
GATSBI uses GANs for SBI, improving posterior estimation in high dimensions.
problem Statistical inference on stochastic models without likelihoods.
method Adversarial approach to variational objective, amortized inference, implicit priors.
result GATSBI returns well-calibrated posterior estimates in high dimensions.
In many domains, scientists build complex simulators of natural phenomena that encode their hypotheses about the underlying processes. These simulators can be deterministic or stochastic, fast or slow, constrained or unconstrained, and so on. Optimizing the simulators with respect to a set of parameter values is common…
Generative Bayesian Inference uses GANs for approximate posterior sampling.
problem Bayesian inference without explicit likelihoods.
method Develops Bayesian GAN (B-GAN) for posterior simulation.
result B-GAN achieves highly competitive performance in posterior sampling.
Posterior SBC validates inference conditionally on observed data.
problem Validating inference for specific observed data.
method Simulation-based calibration checking (SBC) adapted to use posterior parameters.
result Validates inference conditionally on observed data.
New algorithm improves Bayesian inference for complex models.
problem Poor performance of existing Bayesian approaches for simulators.
method Posterior bootstrap and maximum mean discrepancy estimators.
result Strong robustness and parallelizability of the new algorithm.
New method uses neural networks to efficiently approximate Bayesian inference for complex models.
problem Efficiently approximating Bayesian inference for complex models with varying temperatures.
method Fully amortized neural posterior estimator trained on a single forward pass.
result Achieves competitive posterior approximations across various temperatures and benchmarks.
Improves likelihood-free inference by using a new sampling approach to avoid biased data collection.
problem Efficient Bayesian inference without likelihood evaluation for real-world datasets.
method Introduces Neural Proposal (NP) to sample simulation inputs i.i.d. for unbiased posterior inference.
result Demonstrates improved performance, especially for multi-modal posteriors, through experiments.
Improved likelihood-free inference using preconditioned neural posterior estimation.
problem Inaccurate posterior estimation in likelihood-free inference methods.
method Preconditioned Neural Posterior Estimation (PNPE) and Sequential PNPE (PSNPE) methods.
result PNPE and PSNPE improve posterior estimation accuracy over NPE and SNPE.
New method calibrates neural SBI to avoid overconfident posteriors.
problem Overconfident posteriors in SBI due to inaccurate uncertainty quantification.
method Introduces a calibration term into neural model training objective, enabling end-to-end backpropagation.
result Achieves competitive or better coverage and posterior density than existing methods.
Paper introduces RVNP to improve SBI in misspecified models.
problem Misspecification in simulation-based inference leads to unreliable posterior estimation.
method RVNP uses variational inference and error modeling to bridge the simulation-to-reality gap.
result RVNP can recover robust posterior inference without hyperparameters or priors.
Improved SBI with neural networks for complex models.
problem Accurate inference for complex models with intractable likelihood.
method Structured mixtures of probability distributions for likelihood and posterior approximation.
result Accurate posterior inference with smaller computational footprint.
SNPLA uses normalizing flows for efficient inference in implicit models.
problem Efficient inference in implicit models with complex likelihood and posterior learning.
method Sequential Neural Posterior and Likelihood Approximation (SNPLA) algorithm using normalizing flows.
result SNPLA achieves competitive performance with faster posterior draws compared to MCMC methods.
TSNPE improves SBI efficiency and scalability.
problem Efficient and scalable simulation-based inference for complex models.
method Sequential inference with truncated proposals.
result TSNPE performs on par with previous methods and scales to complex models.
A new method optimizes a generalized Kullback-Leibler divergence for better simulation-based inference.
problem Optimizing likelihood functions when they are only known implicitly.
method Optimizes a generalized Kullback-Leibler divergence that accounts for normalization constants in unnormalized distributions.
result Unified approach that combines Neural Posterior Estimation and Neural Ratio Estimation.
Method trains emulators to estimate posterior probabilities safely.
problem Uncertainty in slow forward model calculations.
method Trains emulators while estimating posterior probabilities with MCMC, propagating error.
result Demonstrates robust posterior inference for ΛCDM cosmology model. Misspecification-Aware Simulation-Based Inference via Side-Channel Guidance
problem Simulation-based inference (SBI) of latent parameters is hindered by simulator misspecification.
method Misspecification-Aware Simulation-Based Inference (MA-SBI) turns side-channel text into a posterior correction.
result MA-SBI matches the oracle posterior across 10 seeds and two backbones.
Causal Posterior Estimation improves Bayesian inference in complex models.
problem Bayesian inference in models with intractable likelihood functions.
method Normalizing flow-based approximation with conditional dependence structure.
result Improved accuracy in posterior inference through direct incorporation of model structure.
Unified framework for simulation-based inference learns a single model for multiple tasks.
problem Simulation-based inference for multiple tasks with limited model retraining.
method Unified flow-matching generative model with query-aware masking distribution.
result Competitive performance on various inference tasks and real-world problems.
Bayesian neural networks improve simulation-based inference with limited data.
problem Inaccurate inference in data-poor regimes with limited or expensive simulations.
method Bayesian neural networks for posterior approximation, accounting for computational uncertainty.
result Bayesian neural networks produce well-calibrated posteriors with few simulations.
New method speeds up Bayesian inference for complex simulators.
problem Challenges in Bayesian inference for complex stochastic simulators with intractable likelihood functions.
method Optimization Monte Carlo framework reformulated as deterministic optimization problems with gradient-based methods.
result Accurate posterior inference with reduced runtimes compared to existing methods.
New method speeds up inference for tall data models.
problem Inference for complex models with tall data.
method Diffusion posterior sampling for simulation-based inference.
result Significantly faster and more stable inference.
A new method for Bayesian inference using diffusion models.
problem Bayesian inference in simulator-based models.
method Score-based diffusion models trained with a sequential training procedure.
result Comparable or superior performance compared to existing methods.
New method corrects selection bias in complex models.
problem Selection bias in statistical studies leading to systematic distortions.
method Amortized Bayesian inference with neural posterior estimation.
result Recover well-calibrated posterior distributions across diverse selection mechanisms.
The paper connects ABC to GBI, suggesting ABC as a robustification strategy.
problem Approximate Bayesian Computation struggles with tractability in complex simulators.
method Reinterpreting ABC as an implicitly defined error model and suggesting GBI.
result ABC can be seen as a robustification strategy for approximating Bayesian posteriors.
New method uses low-fidelity simulations to efficiently infer parameters of high-fidelity models.
problem Challenges in inferring parameters of computationally expensive high-fidelity models.
method Multifidelity simulation-based inference using transfer learning and adaptive selection of high-fidelity parameters.
result Significant reduction in the number of high-fidelity simulations required for inference.
Bayesian method improves approximate model posteriors.
problem Poor uncertainty quantification in approximate Bayesian inference.
method Optimizing a transformation of the approximate posterior to maximize a scoring rule.
result Significant reduction in bias and improvement in posterior coverage properties.
SNVI combines likelihood estimation with variational inference for efficient Bayesian inference.
problem Bayesian inference in models with intractable likelihoods.
method Sequential Neural Variational Inference (SNVI) that combines likelihood-estimation with variational inference.
result SNVI is more computationally efficient than previous algorithms without sacrificing accuracy.
L-C2ST improves local diagnostics for SBI approximations.
problem Evaluating trustworthiness of posterior approximations in SBI.
method Local evaluation of posterior estimators at any observation.
result Offers better statistical power and interpretability.