A new method for efficient Gaussian process inference using sparse approximations.
problem Scalable and accurate inference for latent Gaussian processes.
method Variational approximation with sparse inverse Cholesky factors and double Kullback-Leibler minimization.
result The proposed method can achieve highly accurate approximations with polylogarithmic time complexity.
SFSVI uses Gaussian mixtures to approximate neural network outputs for continual learning.
problem Learning new tasks without forgetting old ones in neural networks.
method Sequential function-space variational inference with Gaussian mixture approximation.
result Gaussian mixture SFSVI outperforms other methods in continual learning.
Unified view of GP approximations improves efficiency.
problem Disparate variational features limit GP efficiency.
method View GP as a Banach space to unify feature selection.
result Unified understanding of existing and new features.
Method for initializing Gaussian mixtures for variational inference with multi-modal distributions.
problem Challenges in variational inference with Gaussian mixtures due to multimodality and nonconvex loss functions.
method Optimization to find local maxima, local Gaussian approximations, and constrained least squares regression.
result Robust initialization improves variational inference performance and scalability.
Paper formulates particle flow using variational inference and Fisher-Rao gradient flow.
problem Estimating posterior densities in probabilistic models.
method Variational formulation of particle flow, Fisher-Rao gradient flow, Gaussian and Gaussian mixture approximations.
result Gaussian and Gaussian mixture approximations of Fisher-Rao particle flow reduce to Exact Daum and Huang particle flow under linear Gaussian assumptions.
This thesis disentangles Gauss-Newton and variational approximations in Bayesian deep learning.
problem Understanding the interplay between the Gauss-Newton method and variational approximations in Bayesian deep learning.
method Analysis of the Gauss-Newton method and Laplace/Gaussian variational approximations for neural networks.
result The combination of the Gauss-Newton method with approximate inference can be cast as inference in a linear or Gaussian process model.
Proposes variational Gaussian approximations for solving the Kushner equation.
problem Solving the Kushner equation for state estimation with observations.
method Tractable variational Gaussian approximations of proximal losses based on Wasserstein and Fisher metrics.
result The proposed method leads to a Gaussian flow consistent with Kalman-Bucy and Riccati flows.
Proposes efficient Gaussian approximations for non-Gaussian likelihoods.
problem Computational challenges in learning and inference with non-Gaussian likelihoods.
method Variational inference and moment matching in transformed bases.
result Good approximation quality for binary and multiclass classification.
The paper improves Gaussian process regression by optimizing hyperparameters.
problem Hyperparameter tuning for Gaussian process regression models.
method Adaptive sparse variational approximations using variational Bayes.
result Minimax optimal rates of convergence for variational posterior.
A new framework for recycling Gaussian process approximations.
problem Efficiently combining multiple Gaussian process approximations.
method Construct variational ensembles using a dictionary of fitted Gaussian processes.
result Framework allows for various tasks and scalability.
Paper tightens variational GP approximations for large datasets.
problem Scaling Gaussian processes to large datasets.
method Relaxing the standard assumption about inducing points' posterior matching the prior, leading to a tighter variational approximation.
result The proposed approximation consistently matches or outperforms standard sparse variational GPs while maintaining computational cost.
Parameter estimation for model-based clustering using a finite mixture of normal inverse Gaussian (NIG) distributions is achieved through variational Bayes approximations. Univariate NIG mixtures and multivariate NIG mixtures are considered. The use of variational Bayes approximations here is a substantial departure fr…
VNNGP uses nearest neighbors to approximate GPs, improving scalability and performance.
problem Scalability issues in Gaussian process approximations.
method Sparse precision structure via nearest neighbors, variational framework.
result VNNGP outperforms low-rank methods and is less prone to overfitting.
Latent Gaussian models (LGMs) are widely used in statistics and machine learning. Bayesian inference in non-conjugate LGMs is difficult due to intractable integrals involving the Gaussian prior and non-conjugate likelihoods. Algorithms based on variational Gaussian (VG) approximations are widely employed since they str…
New scalable GP approximation using Fourier series decomposition.
problem Scalability and accuracy in Gaussian process approximations.
method Harmonic kernel decomposition (HKD) to decompose kernels orthogonally.
result Significantly outperforms standard variational methods in scalability and accuracy.
EigenVI uses orthogonal function expansions for efficient variational inference.
problem Efficiently approximate complex distributions in variational inference.
method EigenVI constructs variational approximations using orthogonal function expansions, minimizing Fisher divergence.
result EigenVI provides more accurate approximations than existing methods for Gaussian BBVI.
A new knot selection method speeds up sparse Gaussian process approximations.
problem Efficiently selecting knots for sparse Gaussian processes.
method One-at-a-time Bayesian optimization for knot selection.
result Competitive performance with reduced computational cost.
Deep Gaussian processes provide a flexible approach to probabilistic modelling of data using either supervised or unsupervised learning. For tractable inference approximations to the marginal likelihood of the model must be made. The original approach to approximate inference in these models used variational compressio…
Improved sparse Gaussian processes using structured scaling matrices and Power-EP framework.
problem Scaling Gaussian processes for large datasets.
method Structured diagonal scaling matrix and Power-EP framework.
result Structured approximations improve performance without increasing computational cost.
We propose a family of variational approximations to Bayesian posterior distributions, called α-VB, with provable statistical guarantees. The standard variational approximation is a special case of α-VB with α=1. When α∈(0,1], a novel class of variational inequalities are developed for linking the Bayes risk …
The Laplace approximation has been one of the workhorses of Bayesian inference. It often delivers good approximations in practice despite the fact that it does not strictly take into account where the volume of posterior density lies. Variational approaches avoid this issue by explicitly minimising the Kullback-Leibler…
A new method for Gaussian filtering using gradient flows and Wasserstein metrics.
problem Approximating Gaussian and mixture-of-Gaussians filtering for complex systems.
method Variational approximation via gradient-flow representation on Wasserstein metric space.
result Competitive performance in posterior representation and parameter estimation for systems with multiplicative noise and multi-modal distributions.
This paper introduces a method to approximate Gaussian process regression by representing the problem as a stochastic differential equation and using variational inference to approximate solutions. The approximations are compared with full GP regression and generated paths are demonstrated to be indistinguishable from …
We introduce a new interpretation of sparse variational approximations for Gaussian processes using inducing points, which can lead to more scalable algorithms than previous methods. It is based on decomposing a Gaussian process as a sum of two independent processes: one spanned by a finite basis of inducing points and…
Modeling sequential data has become more and more important in practice. Some applications are autonomous driving, virtual sensors and weather forecasting. To model such systems, so called recurrent models are frequently used. In this paper we introduce several new Deep recurrent Gaussian process (DRGP) models based on…
We use variational Gaussian approximations to analyze parametric models with unknown data-generating distributions.
problem Analyzing inference and learning in parametric models with unknown or intractable data-generating distributions.
method Replica method with variational Gaussian approximation in grand canonical formalism.
result Stationarity conditions adaptively determine parameters of the trial Hamiltonian for each dataset.
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 algorithm radVI improves variational inference by optimizing radial profiles.
problem Gaussian approximations often fail to capture the radial profile of complex distributions.
method Optimizes over radial profiles in variational inference, providing theoretical guarantees.
result Theoretical convergence guarantees for radVI, improving over existing VI methods.
Amortized VI for DGPs learns efficient inference.
problem Expressive limitations in GP approximations.
method Amortized variational inference for DGPs.
result Improved expressive prior and posterior for DGPs.
A scalable method for estimating spatial data using VREML.
problem Costly computation of REML for large, sparse precision matrices in spatial data.
method Proposes VREML framework approximating marginal likelihood with Gaussian variational distribution and deriving a coordinate-ascent algorithm.
result Empirically shows VREML outperforms MLE and INLA.
Variational inference is a powerful tool for approximate inference, and it has been recently applied for representation learning with deep generative models. We develop the variational Gaussian process (VGP), a Bayesian nonparametric variational family, which adapts its shape to match complex posterior distributions. T…
This paper considers a new family of variational distributions motivated by Sklar's theorem. This family is based on new copula-like densities on the hypercube with non-uniform marginals which can be sampled efficiently, i.e. with a complexity linear in the dimension of state space. Then, the proposed variational densi…
This paper proposes a method to approximate non-Gaussian likelihoods in Gaussian Processes.
problem Approximating non-Gaussian likelihoods in Gaussian Processes.
method Proposes a piece-wise constant approximation for the inverse-link function.
result Yields a closed form solution for the SVGP lower bound.
The paper develops efficient algorithms for variational inference with mixtures of isotropic Gaussians.
problem Efficiently approximating multimodal Bayesian posteriors.
method Develops a variational framework and efficient algorithms for mixtures of isotropic Gaussians.
result The approach provides accurate approximations of multimodal Bayesian posteriors while being memory and computationally efficient.
TM-VI uses flexible transformation models to approximate complex posteriors in Bayesian models.
problem Approximating complex posteriors in Bayesian models with limited flexibility.
method Transformation models for variational inference (TM-VI).
result TM-VI allows accurate approximation of complex posteriors in models with one parameter and works in a mean-field fashion for multi-parameter models.
A new variational inference method using Gaussian score matching.
problem Approximating posterior distributions in Bayesian statistics.
method Score matching principle applied to variational inference.
result Gaussian score matching VI (GSM-VI) is faster and requires fewer gradient evaluations.
Several numerical approximation strategies for the expectation-propagation algorithm are studied in the context of large-scale learning: the Laplace method, a faster variant of it, Gaussian quadrature, and a deterministic version of variational sampling (i.e., combining quadrature with variational approximation). Exper…
Combines VI and EP for better Gaussian process hyperparameter learning.
problem Improving hyperparameter learning in Gaussian processes for better performance.
method Hybrid training procedure combining Variational Inference (VI) for posterior inference and Expectation Propagation (EP) for hyperparameter learning.
result The hybrid training procedure provides a better learning objective and generalizes better than using only VI or EP.
We consider the problem of learning a Gaussian variational approximation to the posterior distribution for a high-dimensional parameter, where we impose sparsity in the precision matrix to reflect appropriate conditional independence structure in the model. Incorporating sparsity in the precision matrix allows the Gaus…
The variational autoencoder (VAE) is a generative model with continuous latent variables where a pair of probabilistic encoder (bottom-up) and decoder (top-down) is jointly learned by stochastic gradient variational Bayes. We first elaborate Gaussian VAE, approximating the local covariance matrix of the decoder as an o…
New method DDVI improves posterior inference for deep Gaussian processes.
problem Inference of inducing points in DGPs is challenging and biased.
method DDVI uses denoising diffusion SDE and score matching for posterior approximation.
result Empirically shows DDVI outperforms baseline methods in inducing point inference.
New method improves GP regression by relaxing variational assumption.
problem Improving variational Gaussian processes for better predictive performance.
method Relaxing the variational assumption to a more general distribution for optimization.
result New tighter evidence lower bound for GP regression.
Standard sparse pseudo-input approximations to the Gaussian process (GP) cannot handle complex functions well. Sparse spectrum alternatives attempt to answer this but are known to over-fit. We suggest the use of variational inference for the sparse spectrum approximation to avoid both issues. We model the covariance fu…
New algorithms improve likelihood of finding global optima in Bayesian inference.
problem Finding global optima in Bayesian inference is difficult due to nonconvexity.
method Developed two algorithms: consistent Laplace approximation (CLA) and consistent stochastic variational inference (CSVI).
result Both CSVI and CLA improve likelihood of obtaining global optima compared to standard methods.
Elliptical processes extend Gaussian models with heavier tails.
problem Regression and classification with non-Gaussian likelihoods or heavy tails.
method Spline normalizing flow for variational inference of elliptical distributions.
result Elliptical processes outperform Gaussian processes in non-Gaussian settings.
The Black Box Variational Inference (Ranganath et al. (2014)) algorithm provides a universal method for Variational Inference, but taking advantage of special properties of the approximation family or of the target can improve the convergence speed significantly. For example, if the approximation family is a transforma…
The paper analyzes how factorized Gaussian approximations underestimate uncertainty in variational inference.
problem Underestimation of uncertainty in variational inference using factorized Gaussian approximations.
method Examined the trade-off between shrinkage and delinking in approximating a Gaussian with a diagonal covariance matrix.
result Entropy of the factorized Gaussian approximation underestimates both componentwise variance and entropy of the original Gaussian.
Variational inference (VI) is a widely used framework in Bayesian estimation. For most of the non-Gaussian statistical models, it is infeasible to find an analytically tractable solution to estimate the posterior distributions of the parameters. Recently, an improved framework, namely the extended variational inference…