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 “variational convergence”
Variational inference methods for latent variable statistical models have gained popularity because they are relatively fast, can handle large data sets, and have deterministic convergence guarantees. However, in practice it is unclear whether the fixed point identified by the variational inference algorithm is a local…
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.
New method guarantees global convergence in variational inference.
problem Limited convergence to local optima in variational inference.
method Minimizes inclusive KL divergence using neural networks and neural tangent kernel.
result Gradient descent dynamics converge to a unique solution in function space.
Square-root natural-gradient improves variational inference convergence.
problem Challenges in establishing theoretical convergence guarantees for natural-gradient descent.
method Square-root parameterization for Gaussian covariance.
result Establishes novel convergence guarantees for natural-gradient Gaussian inference.
The study provides statistical guarantees for Bayesian variational boosting.
problem Statistical and convergence issues in variational boosting.
method Proposed a novel variational family and a functional Frank-Wolfe optimization algorithm.
result Demonstrated stochastic boundedness and provided convergence rate for boosting iterates.
BBVI with STL converges geometrically under perfect specification, with quadratic variance bound.
problem Convergence rate of BBVI with STL estimator.
method Proved geometric convergence rate with quadratic variance bound for BBVI with STL estimator.
result BBVI with STL converges geometrically under perfect variational family specification.
We introduce TrustVI, a fast second-order algorithm for black-box variational inference based on trust-region optimization and the reparameterization trick. At each iteration, TrustVI proposes and assesses a step based on minibatches of draws from the variational distribution. The algorithm provably converges to a stat…
New guarantees for black-box variational inference methods.
problem Insufficient theoretical guarantees for black-box variational inference.
method Novel convergence guarantees for stochastic optimization of variational inference.
result Provable convergence of proximal and projected stochastic gradient descent for variational inference.
New algorithms accelerate SVGD convergence using deep unfolding.
problem Improving the speed of SVGD convergence.
method Integrating deep unfolding into SVGD for parameter learning.
result Proposed algorithms achieve faster convergence in various tasks.
Study on slow convergence in geometric variational problems.
problem Slow convergence of solutions in geometric variational problems.
method Identifying necessary conditions for slowly converging solutions and characterizing their convergence rate and direction.
result Characterization of the rate and direction of convergence for slowly converging solutions.
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.
Variational inference is increasingly being addressed with stochastic optimization. In this setting, the gradient's variance plays a crucial role in the optimization procedure, since high variance gradients lead to poor convergence. A popular approach used to reduce gradient's variance involves the use of control varia…
BaM improves BBVI by optimizing a score-based divergence, leading to faster convergence.
problem Slow convergence of black-box variational inference methods.
method Batch and match (BaM) approach based on a score-based divergence.
result BaM converges exponentially quickly to the target mean and covariance.
Geometric analysis improves convergence of variational inference.
problem Challenges in analyzing convergence of variational inference due to non-convexity and non-smoothness.
method Exploits exponential family structure and Bregman divergences to geometrically analyze the optimization landscape.
result Establishes non-asymptotic convergence rates for gradient descent algorithms.
The paper provides convergence guarantees for VAEs using SGD and Adam.
problem Understanding theoretical convergence guarantees for VAEs.
method Derives non-asymptotic convergence rates for VAEs trained with SGD and Adam.
result Convergence rate of \(\mathcal{O}(\log n / \sqrt{n})\) with explicit hyperparameter dependencies.
Neural networks solve variational inequalities for optimal stopping problems.
problem Solving variational inequalities for optimal stopping problems in finance.
method Proposed neural network approach using loss functions directly incorporating variational inequality on whole domain.
result Existence and convergence of neural networks whose losses converge to zero.
New variational flows improve Monte Carlo and normalization tasks.
problem Intractable global optimum in expressive variational families.
method Constructing asymptotically exact variational flows from involutive MCMC kernels.
result Provable total variation convergence of new variational families.
Improves understanding of stochastic NGVI convergence rates.
problem Lack of knowledge about non-asymptotic convergence rates in stochastic NGVI.
method Proved non-asymptotic convergence rates for conjugate likelihoods and showed implicit optimization for non-conjugate likelihoods.
result First non-asymptotic convergence rate for stochastic NGVI in conjugate likelihoods.
New algorithm speeds up large-scale statistical inference.
problem Efficiently solving large-scale mean-field variational inference problems.
method Developed a novel primal-dual algorithm (PD-VI) and a block-preconditioned extension (PD-VI) for mean-field variational inference.
result PD-VI and PD-VI achieve faster convergence and better solution quality compared to existing methods.
Paper proposes a second-order method for faster SVI convergence.
problem Poor convergence rate of first-order SVI algorithms.
method Derives Hessian matrix and implements two numerical schemes for efficient second-order SVI.
result Proposed approach achieves faster convergence compared to first-order SVI.
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…
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.
A new dynamical formulation of log-PCA captures local principal modes of geodesic variations.
problem Learning principal variations of random probability measures under Wasserstein geometry.
method Introducing a new dynamical formulation of log-PCA as a variational approach.
result Deriving a general statistical convergence rate for empirical WT-PCA.
SVGD algorithm converges at rate 1/sqrt(log log n) for sub-Gaussian distributions.
problem Approximating a probability distribution with particles.
method Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) with finite particles and sub-Gaussian target distribution.
result SVGD achieves a convergence rate of 1/sqrt(log log n) for sub-Gaussian distributions.
Develops a new framework for analyzing MFVI algorithms.
problem Analyzes mean field variational inference (MFVI) formulations.
method Inspired by variational Bayesian formulations, represents MFVI problem in three ways: gradient flow, Fokker-Planck-like equations, and diffusion process.
result Establishes rigorous guarantees for convergence of time-discretized coordinate ascent variational inference algorithms.
Quantized Variational Inference improves ELBO optimization with fast convergence.
problem Maximizing Evidence Lower Bound (ELBO) for variational inference.
method Optimal Voronoi Tesselation for variance-free gradients, Richardson extrapolation for asymptotic improvement.
result Quantized Variational Inference leads to fast convergence with comparable computational cost.
We introduce a natural definition of -convergence of maps, , in the case where the domain is a convergent sequence of measured metric space with respect to the measured Gromov-Hausdorff topology and the target is a Gromov-Hausdorff convergent sequence. With the -convergence, we establish a theory of …
Extends tracking guarantees for time-varying variational inequalities.
problem Tracking solutions of time-varying variational inequalities.
method Extends existing results to sublinear solution paths and periodic problems.
result Discrete dynamical systems of periodic time-varying VI can exhibit chaotic behavior or converge to the solution.
New convergence results for NGVI with various step sizes and sample sizes.
problem Understanding convergence of stochastic NGVI for various schedules.
method Projected stochastic NGVI for exponential family variational distributions.
result Geometric convergence and $\mathcal{O}\left(\frac{1}{T^ρ}
ight)$ rates for different schedules.
Paper accelerates Bayesian few-shot classification using mirror descent.
problem Non-conjugate inference in Bayesian few-shot classification.
method Integrates mirror descent-based variational inference into Gaussian process-based few-shot classification.
result Accelerated convergence and improved uncertainty quantification.
New algorithm improves convergence of Bayesian inference.
problem Efficient sampling from complex distributions.
method Stochastic Stein Variational Newton method (sSVN).
result sSVN converges faster and more accurately than SVGD.
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.
Random scan CAVI converges linearly under log-concave assumptions.
problem Analyzing the convergence rate of random scan Coordinate Ascent Variational Inference (CAVI) under log-concave conditions.
method Building on previous work, we analyze the random scan version of CAVI using optimal transport geometry.
result We obtain tight linear convergence rates for the random scan version of CAVI.
BSVGD improves sampling for multimodal distributions using branching.
problem Sampling from multimodal distributions.
method Random branching in Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD).
result Theoretical convergence guarantee and empirical validation.
A recent algorithmic family for distributed optimization, DIGing's, have been shown to have geometric convergence over time-varying undirected/directed graphs. Nevertheless, an identical step-size for all agents is needed. In this paper, we study the convergence rates of the Adapt-Then-Combine (ATC) variation of the DI…
Improved convergence rates for Stein Variational Gradient Descent in finite-particle settings.
problem Improving convergence rates for Stein Variational Gradient Descent in finite-particle settings.
method Analyzing the time derivative of relative entropy and splitting it into dominant and smaller parts.
result Finite-particle convergence rates of order 1/\sqrt{N} for Kernelized Stein Discrepancy and Wasserstein-2 metrics.
A new algorithm for optimizing probability distributions converges linearly.
problem Optimizing functionals over families of probability distributions.
method Variational transport: particle-based algorithm approximating Wasserstein gradient descent.
result Variational transport converges linearly to the global minimum of the objective functional.
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.
A variational inequality for pricing the perpetual American option and the corresponding difference equation are considered. First, the maximum principle and uniqueness of the solution to variational inequality for pricing the perpetual American option are proved. Then the maximum principle, the existence and uniquenes…
Paper presents a method to solve variational inequalities with general constraints without requiring analytic solutions.
problem Solving variational inequalities with general constraints.
method A primal-dual approach using approximate subproblem solutions and warm-starting.
result The method converges with a rate of for -Lipschitz and monotone operators.
The paper provides guarantees for a tangent transform algorithm in logistic regression models.
problem Finding theoretical guarantees for statistical optimality and algorithmic convergence in non-conjugate models.
method Exploiting convex duality and minorizing the marginal likelihood, the paper derives non-asymptotic upper bounds and convergence guarantees for a tangent transform algorithm in logistic regression models.
result The tangent transform algorithm is shown to be locally asymptotically stable without assumptions on the data-generating process.
Variational method for eigenvalues on manifolds.
problem Optimizing functionals involving eigenvalues of Riemannian manifolds.
method New Palais-Smale sequences and min-max methods for locally-Lipschitz functionals.
result Convergence of Palais-Smale sequences in Laplace and Steklov eigenvalues.
The extragradient method fails for hypomonotone variational inequalities.
problem The convergence of the extragradient method for hypomonotone variational inequalities.
method Application of the extragradient method to hypomonotone linear operators.
result The extragradient method diverges for hypomonotone variational inequalities.
A new ParVI framework improves particle-based variational inference methods.
problem Non-trivial kernel design in particle-based variational inference methods.
method Proposes a generalized Wasserstein gradient descent (GWG) framework with broader regularizers.
result Demonstrates strong convergence guarantees and effectiveness on simulated and real data.
Study bounds the index of minimal submanifolds using energy measures and Yang-Mills-Higgs equations.
problem Bounding the index of codimension 2 minimal submanifolds.
method Second inner variation of energy, convergence of energy measures, and stress-energy tensors.
result Bound the Morse index of the submanifold by the index of critical points.
CAVI converges for log-concave measures via optimal transport.
problem Finding the closest product measure to a log-concave measure via CAVI.
method Adapting coordinate descent techniques from Euclidean space to optimal transport for log-concave densities.
result Proves convergence of CAVI for log-concave densities and provides rates of convergence under additional conditions.
The paper shows diffusion models can converge faster to a target distribution with low-dimensional structure.
problem Improving the convergence rate of diffusion models to target distributions.
method Analyzing DDIM and DDPM samplers under low-dimensional structure assumptions.
result The iteration complexities of DDIM and DDPM are no greater than in total variation distance.