Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) methods are used to approximate posterior distributions in models with unknown or computationally intractable likelihoods. Both the accuracy and computational efficiency of ABC depend on the choice of summary statistic, but outside of special cases where the optimal summary statis…
Unified approach for selecting summary statistics in ABC.
problem Efficient inference from large datasets in likelihood-free methods.
method Characterizing and unifying three classes of summary statistics, minimizing expected posterior entropy.
result EPE-minimizing summaries lead to competitive posterior inference.
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.
Improved likelihood-free inference by localizing and refining low-dimensional approximations.
problem Poor performance of common likelihood-free methods in high-dimensional models.
method Localisation followed by refinement of low-dimensional summaries.
result Improved accuracy in marginal posteriors through localized and refined approximations.
A new method for analyzing latent space models without reference configurations.
problem Posterior summaries of latent coordinates in Euclidean latent space models are not canonical due to likelihood invariance.
method Quotient-based posterior analysis using the centered Gram map.
result Intrinsic posterior summaries of mean structure and uncertainty can be computed directly from posterior samples.
Improved NPE with conditional diffusions and summary networks.
problem Approximating complex posterior distributions efficiently and accurately.
method Conditional diffusions coupled with high-capacity summary networks.
result Conditional diffusions offer improved stability, accuracy, and faster training times.
Bayesian model averaging under predictor redundancy
problem Reporting Bayesian model averaging posterior without changing the Bayesian target
method Using hard or soft regions of support space
result Region reports often give shorter and clearer summaries while preserving the main posterior information
Plug-in robust NPE method adapts summaries independently of pretrained NPE.
problem Misspecification of neural posterior estimators under test data distribution.
method Minimum-distance summaries using maximum mean discrepancy (MMD).
result Substantial robustness gains with minimal additional overhead.
The paper proposes using Autoencoders to learn summary statistics for Bayesian inference.
problem Approximating posterior distributions for models with intractable likelihood functions.
method Using Autoencoders to extract summary statistics that retain parameter information and cancel noise.
result The approach effectively learns summary statistics that improve posterior approximation.
Complicated generative models often result in a situation where computing the likelihood of observed data is intractable, while simulating from the conditional density given a parameter value is relatively easy. Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) is a paradigm that enables simulation-based posterior inference in su…
Improves inference from sparse data with hybrid summary statistics.
problem Robust simulation-based inference from limited data.
method Augment traditional summary statistics with neural network outputs to maximize mutual information.
result Improves information extraction and makes inference robust in low-data settings.
TopoFisher learns topological summaries by maximizing Fisher information, improving parameter efficiency and inference quality.
problem Simulation-based inference misses key information in low-order statistics, especially for non-Gaussian fields.
method TopoFisher uses a differentiable persistent-homology pipeline that learns topological summaries by maximizing local Gaussian Fisher information.
result TopoFisher recovers much of the available information and outperforms fixed topological vectorizations in weak gravitational lensing.
Performing exact posterior inference in complex generative models is often difficult or impossible due to an expensive to evaluate or intractable likelihood function. Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is an inference framework that constructs an approximation to the true likelihood based on the similarity between …
JANA trains networks to approximate Bayesian models efficiently.
problem Intractable likelihood functions and posterior densities in Bayesian models.
method End-to-end training of three networks: summary, posterior, and likelihood networks.
result JANA provides accurate amortized marginal likelihood and posterior predictive estimation.
ABI adapts to graph data for fast, scalable inference.
problem Challenges in inference on graph-structured data.
method Amortized Bayesian Inference (ABI) framework for graph data.
result ABI successfully addresses challenges in graph data inference.
Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) are likelihood-free Monte Carlo methods. ABC methods use a comparison between simulated data, using different parameters drew from a prior distribution, and observed data. This comparison process is based on computing a distance between the summary statistics from the simulated da…
New compression methods handle biased input sequences for more accurate posterior summaries.
problem Handling biased input sequences for accurate posterior summaries.
method Stein kernel thinning, low-rank SKT, Stein recombination, Stein Cholesky.
result Achieves accurate posterior summaries with biased input sequences.
A new method improves likelihood-free Bayesian inference by transforming summary statistics and using efficient Variational Bayes.
problem Incorrectly assuming normally distributed summary statistics in likelihood-free Bayesian inference.
method Wasserstein Gaussianization transformation combined with robust BSL and efficient Variational Bayes.
result Highly efficient and reliable approximate Bayesian inference for likelihood-free problems.
New summary measures reveal geometric structure in weighted measures on manifolds.
problem Lack of geometric information in standard weight-only summaries.
method Heat-kernel entropy profiles, tracking nonuniformity across scales.
result Geometric effective sample size discounts nearby or duplicate particles.
Bayesian neural networks improve likelihood-free inference efficiency.
problem Efficient parameter inference from simulation models with uncertainty.
method Bayesian neural networks for summary statistics, adaptive sampling.
result More robust and efficient posterior estimation.
Approximate Bayesian inference on the basis of summary statistics is well-suited to complex problems for which the likelihood is either mathematically or computationally intractable. However the methods that use rejection suffer from the curse of dimensionality when the number of summary statistics is increased. Here w…
We present a novel family of deep neural architectures, named partially exchangeable networks (PENs) that leverage probabilistic symmetries. By design, PENs are invariant to block-switch transformations, which characterize the partial exchangeability properties of conditionally Markovian processes. Moreover, we show th…
This document is an invited chapter covering the specificities of ABC model choice, intended for the incoming Handbook of ABC by Sisson, Fan, and Beaumont (2017). Beyond exposing the potential pitfalls of ABC based posterior probabilities, the review emphasizes mostly the solution proposed by Pudlo et al. (2016) on the…
A new ABC method uses variational approximations for efficient inference.
problem Computational challenges in Bayesian inference for complex models.
method Variational approximation for log-posterior, empirical likelihood for estimating expected log-likelihood, differential entropy estimation.
result Posterior consistency established for the proposed method.
New method uses Rashomon sets to improve Bayesian inference in factorial designs.
problem Combustion of model uncertainty in factorial designs leads to multimodal posterior and convergence issues.
method Rashomon-seeded annealing, integrating high-performing models as warm start for AIS.
result Restores full posterior inference without exhaustive enumeration of model space.
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.
ABC method uses machine learning for likelihood-free inference.
problem Statistical inference in simulator-based models with intractable likelihoods.
method Direct comparison of empirical distributions via KL divergence estimator and contrastive learning.
result Asymptotic normality of ABC posterior distributions with properly scaled exponential kernel.
We introduce a framework for Continual Learning (CL) based on Bayesian inference over the function space rather than the parameters of a deep neural network. This method, referred to as functional regularisation for Continual Learning, avoids forgetting a previous task by constructing and memorising an approximate post…
Active learning method for ABC statistics selection reduces expert work and improves posterior estimates.
problem Handling intractable likelihood functions in models with domain knowledge.
method Active learning method for selecting summary statistics in ABC.
result Better posterior estimates than existing methods, especially with limited simulation budget.
BayesFlow learns complex models using neural networks.
problem Estimating parameters in complex, non-likelihood models.
method Invertible neural networks for global Bayesian inference.
result Global probabilistic mapping from data to parameters.
We consider the problem of parametric statistical inference when likelihood computations are prohibitively expensive but sampling from the model is possible. Several so-called likelihood-free methods have been developed to perform inference in the absence of a likelihood function. The popular synthetic likelihood appro…
Infinite mixture models are commonly used for clustering. One can sample from the posterior of mixture assignments by Monte Carlo methods or find its maximum a posteriori solution by optimization. However, in some problems the posterior is diffuse and it is hard to interpret the sampled partitionings. In this paper, we…
Develops a new method for sampling from Bayesian credible sets using deep generative quantile learning.
problem Sampling from posterior distributions in high-dimensional spaces with intractable likelihoods.
method Uses deep neural networks to implicitly sample from Bayesian credible sets via a push-forward mapping and Monge-Kantorovich depth.
result Demonstrates improved performance and theoretical consistency of the quantile learning framework.
The paper introduces FMCI and hybrid decoding for hidden Markov models.
problem Computing distributions and decoding hidden state sequences in HMMs.
method Finite Markov chain imbedding (FMCI) and hybrid decoding.
result Hybrid decoding improves performance over traditional methods.
Causal inference from observational data is hard due to discontinuous causal effects.
problem Causal inference from observational data is hard due to discontinuous causal effects.
method The problem is tackled by showing that many standard point estimates can be read as point summaries of multimodal distributions over the space of structural causal models.
result Many standard point estimates can be discontinuous summaries, while explicit posterior means and medians are continuous.
Parametric statistical models that are implicitly defined in terms of a stochastic data generating process are used in a wide range of scientific disciplines because they enable accurate modeling. However, learning the parameters from observed data is generally very difficult because their likelihood function is typica…
Geometric framework analyzes bias in variational inference for posterior functionals.
problem Analyzing the bias of posterior functionals under variational approximations.
method Developed a geometric framework to evaluate the bias of posterior functionals using the variational tangent space.
result The leading-order bias of a posterior functional is determined by its component orthogonal to the variational tangent space.
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.
Many scientifically well-motivated statistical models in natural, engineering and environmental sciences are specified through a generative process, but in some cases it may not be possible to write down a likelihood for these models analytically. Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) methods, which allow Bayesian inf…
Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) has become an essential part of the Bayesian toolbox for addressing problems in which the likelihood is prohibitively expensive or entirely unknown, making it intractable. ABC defines a pseudo-posterior by comparing observed data with simulated data, traditionally based on some su…
A new machine learning method for Bayesian inverse problems in function spaces.
problem Bayesian inverse problems in function spaces with incompatibility of white noise sources.
method One-step generative transport with amortized neural operator and prior-aligned Gaussian random field.
result Generative operator trained on prior samples and noisy observations generates posterior samples efficiently.
We describe an embarrassingly parallel, anytime Monte Carlo method for likelihood-free models. The algorithm starts with the view that the stochasticity of the pseudo-samples generated by the simulator can be controlled externally by a vector of random numbers u, in such a way that the outcome, knowing u, is determinis…
Information-theoretic quantities, such as conditional entropy and mutual information, are critical data summaries for quantifying uncertainty. Current widely used approaches for computing such quantities rely on nearest neighbor methods and exhibit both strong performance and theoretical guarantees in certain simple sc…
We extend diffusion models to function spaces and introduce a new method for sampling from posterior distributions.
problem Sampling from posterior distributions in infinite-dimensional function spaces using diffusion models.
method Infinite-dimensional extension of Doob's h-transform, Supervised Guidance Training for efficient sampling. result We prove that diffusion models can be conditioned to sample from posterior distributions and introduce a simulation-free score matching objective.
Pseudo-Likelihood Inference improves ABC for high-dimensional Bayesian inference.
problem Intractable likelihood in Bayesian system identification.
method PLI combines neural approximation with integral probability metrics and adaptive bandwidth.
result PLI outperforms SNPE on challenging tasks, especially with more data.
Develops a category-theoretic approach to interpret conformal prediction.
problem Interpreting conformal prediction as a quantitative uncertainty tool.
method Category-theoretic approach to represent and decompose conformal prediction.
result Decomposes conformal prediction into two steps: predictive distributions and prediction regions.
Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) is typically used when the likelihood is either unavailable or intractable but where data can be simulated under different parameter settings using a forward model. Despite the recent interest in ABC, high-dimensional data and costly simulations still remain a bottleneck in some a…
Bayesian priors for neural networks are improved by incorporating weight correlations and tail behavior.
problem Improving Bayesian priors for neural networks to better reflect true beliefs and performance.
method Analyzed summary statistics of neural network weights in different architectures and incorporated these observations into new priors.
result Improved performance on image classification datasets by using new priors that account for weight correlations and tail behavior.