We investigate the use of alternative divergences to Kullback-Leibler (KL) in variational inference(VI), based on the Variational Dropout \cite{kingma2015}. Stochastic gradient variational Bayes (SGVB) \cite{aevb} is a general framework for estimating the evidence lower bound (ELBO) in Variational Bayes. In this work, …
On-device research index
arXiv research
A locally-built, LLM-digested index of recent arXiv papers in quant finance, geometry/topology, and statistical ML — keyword search served straight from SQLite on this machine.
168,695 papers · 148 categories
Trend · papers per month
48 results for “variational divergence”
Paper introduces f-divergence variational inference for broader application.
problem Variational inference limited to specific divergences.
method Generalizes variational inference to all f-divergences using f-divergence minimization.
result Unified framework for variational inference with arbitrary f-divergences.
This paper introduces a variational approximation framework using direct optimization of what is known as the {\it scale invariant Alpha-Beta divergence} (sAB divergence). This new objective encompasses most variational objectives that use the Kullback-Leibler, the R{é}nyi or the gamma divergences. It also gives access…
We develop a method to combine Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and variational inference (VI), leveraging the advantages of both inference approaches. Specifically, we improve the variational distribution by running a few MCMC steps. To make inference tractable, we introduce the variational contrastive divergence (VCD)…
Automates VI divergence selection for efficient few-shot learning.
problem Efficiently selecting divergence measures for VI to improve performance.
method Meta-learning algorithm to learn optimal divergence metric and variational parameter initialization.
result Meta-learning approach outperforms standard VI methods across various tasks.
We introduce a new approximation of -divergences for machine learning.
problem Variational representations of -divergences for machine learning.
method Definition and analysis of Moreau-Yosida approximation of -divergences with the Wasserstein-1 metric.
result Generalization and relaxation of hard Lipschitz constraints in -divergences.
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.
New variational formula for Rényi divergences improves neural network estimation in high dimensions.
problem Estimating Rényi divergences in high-dimensional systems.
method Derive and apply a variational formula for Rényi divergences over various function spaces.
result Neural network estimators of Rényi divergences are consistent under certain conditions.
We extend a variational framework to estimate calibration errors for divergences.
problem Ensuring predicted probabilities match observed class frequencies in machine learning.
method Extend variational framework to divergences, separating over- and under-confidence.
result Avoids overestimation and separates over- and under-confidence.
Black box variational inference (BBVI) with reparameterization gradients triggered the exploration of divergence measures other than the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence, such as alpha divergences. In this paper, we view BBVI with generalized divergences as a form of estimating the marginal likelihood via biased import…
Optimizing Variational Representations of Divergences and Accelerating their Statistical Estimationcs.LG
New method tightens variational representations of divergences for faster learning.
problem Improving tightness of variational representations of divergences for faster statistical estimation.
method Improved objective functionals constructed via an auxiliary optimization problem, leveraging neural network approximation.
result Tighter variational representations can result in significantly faster learning and more accurate estimation of divergences.
Probabilistic models are often trained by maximum likelihood, which corresponds to minimizing a specific f-divergence between the model and data distribution. In light of recent successes in training Generative Adversarial Networks, alternative non-likelihood training criteria have been proposed. Whilst not necessarily…
This paper introduces the variational Rényi bound (VR) that extends traditional variational inference to Rényi's alpha-divergences. This new family of variational methods unifies a number of existing approaches, and enables a smooth interpolation from the evidence lower-bound to the log (marginal) likelihood that is co…
New -divergence measures improve robustness in noisy label learning.
problem Improving robustness in learning with noisy labels.
method Derived decoupling property of -divergence measures under label noise.
result Properly defined -divergence measures are robust with label noise.
The paper introduces a new divergence measure for variational autoencoders to improve reconstruction and generation.
problem Balancing reconstruction and generalizability in latent space of variational autoencoders.
method Presented a regularisation mechanism based on skew-geometric Jensen-Shannon divergence.
result The skew-geometric Jensen-Shannon divergence leads to better reconstruction and generation in variational autoencoders.
Robustness to outliers is a central issue in real-world machine learning applications. While replacing a model to a heavy-tailed one (e.g., from Gaussian to Student-t) is a standard approach for robustification, it can only be applied to simple models. In this paper, based on Zellner's optimization and variational form…
DAIS minimizes symmetrized KL divergence between initial and target distributions.
problem Optimizing over initial distributions in importance sampling.
method Differentiable annealed importance sampling (DAIS) minimizing symmetrized KL divergence.
result DAIS minimizes symmetrized KL divergence between initial and target distributions.
We unify f-divergences, Bregman divergences, surrogate loss bounds (regret bounds), proper scoring rules, matching losses, cost curves, ROC-curves and information. We do this by systematically studying integral and variational representations of these objects and in so doing identify their primitives which all are rela…
Particle-based variational inference offers a flexible way of approximating complex posterior distributions with a set of particles. In this paper we introduce a new particle-based variational inference method based on the theory of semi-discrete optimal transport. Instead of minimizing the KL divergence between the po…
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.
A new EVI framework improves ParVI methods by maintaining variational structure and reducing KL-divergence.
problem Improving variational inference methods for better approximation of target distributions.
method EVI framework that minimizes the VI objective function based on an energy-dissipation law, including a new 'Approximation-then-Variation' scheme.
result The new scheme significantly decreases KL-divergence and outperforms existing ParVI methods in fidelity.
Study introduces a variational approach for efficient KL divergence estimation in Dirichlet mixture models.
problem Efficient estimation of KL divergence in Dirichlet mixture models.
method Variational approach for a closed-form solution.
result Superior efficiency and accuracy compared to Monte Carlo methods.
Paper proposes f-EBM for training deep EBMs using various f-divergences.
problem Training deep EBMs with intractable partition functions.
method Introduces f-EBM framework and optimization algorithm for any f-divergence.
result f-EBM outperforms contrastive divergence and other f-divergences.
New divergences improve estimation and GAN training performance.
problem Improving estimation and training in machine learning models.
method Function-space regularized Rényi divergences.
result New divergences reduce variance and improve training performance.
Generalized Guarantees for Variational Inference in the Presence of Even and Elliptical Symmetrystat.ML
New guarantees for VI in symmetric cases, extending previous results.
problem Symmetry in variational inference for complex distributions.
method Analysis of -divergences and their stationary points under symmetry.
result Symmetry-matching principles ensure recovery of mean and correlation matrix.
Proposes practical kernel tests for -divergences with theoretical guarantees.
problem Two-sample testing and machine unlearning evaluation.
method Regularized -divergence kernel tests, adaptive to hyperparameters.
result Different -divergences highlight localized differences.
Stochastic variational inference (SVI) plays a key role in Bayesian deep learning. Recently various divergences have been proposed to design the surrogate loss for variational inference. We present a simple upper bound of the evidence as the surrogate loss. This evidence upper bound (EUBO) equals to the log marginal li…
RényiCL uses Rényi divergence for robust contrastive learning with stronger data augmentations.
problem Learning useful representations from multiple data views with hard augmentations.
method RényiCL employs Rényi divergence for contrastive learning, using a novel variational objective to manage hard negative sampling.
result RényiCL achieves better performance with stronger augmentations compared to other methods.
New methods minimize GFlowNet training divergences for better sampling.
problem Training GFlowNets with KL divergence leads to biased and high-variance estimators.
method Design and implement efficient estimators for four divergence measures.
result Properly minimizing these divergences yields a provably correct and effective training scheme.
This paper introduces Wasserstein variational inference, a new form of approximate Bayesian inference based on optimal transport theory. Wasserstein variational inference uses a new family of divergences that includes both f-divergences and the Wasserstein distance as special cases. The gradients of the Wasserstein var…
A new VIS approach improves log-likelihood estimation in latent variable models.
problem Challenges in achieving high log-likelihood with VI for complex posterior distributions.
method Uses forward divergence to optimize proposal distribution for better log-likelihood estimation.
result Consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in log-likelihood and parameter estimation.
The paper proposes a method to learn differentially private variational autoencoders with term-wise gradient aggregation.
problem Learning variational autoencoders with differential privacy constraints and multiple divergences.
method Term-wise Differentially Private SGD (DP-SGD) that crafts randomized gradients for each loss term, keeping sensitivity at O(1).
result The method reduces the amount of noise needed for differential privacy, allowing better learning.
We show that the variational representations for f-divergences currently used in the literature can be tightened. This has implications to a number of methods recently proposed based on this representation. As an example application we use our tighter representation to derive a general f-divergence estimator based on t…
Variational inference with α-divergences has been widely used in modern probabilistic machine learning. Compared to Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence, a major advantage of using α-divergences (with positive α values) is their mass-covering property. However, estimating and optimizing α-divergences require to use importa…
A new method combines VI and IS to improve Bayesian inference accuracy.
problem Bayesian inference often underestimates posterior tails, leading to miscalibration and degeneracy.
method Proposes a novel combination of optimization and sampling techniques using the forward KL divergence.
result The method guarantees asymptotic consistency and fast convergence to optimal IS and variational approximations.
RTVAE uses β-divergence to detect anomalies in tabular data robustly.
problem Outliers in tabular data affect VAE training and anomaly detection.
method Robust VAE with β-divergence for mixed categorical and continuous features.
result Demonstrates effectiveness on network traffic anomaly detection.
New -divergence loss function improves neural density ratio estimation.
problem Optimization challenges in existing DRE methods, especially overfitting and high sample requirements.
method Derived -divergence loss function (-Div) for neural density ratio estimation.
result The -divergence loss function (-Div) offers stable and effective optimization for DRE.
Variational inference improves training of generative flow networks.
problem Training generative flow networks efficiently and accurately.
method Define variational objectives in terms of KL divergences and optimize convex combinations.
result Variational inference methods can reduce the variance of gradients in training generative flow networks.
New method improves variational inference for better posterior approximation.
problem Challenges in minimizing inclusive KL divergence for amortized variational inference.
method Likelihood-tempered sequential Monte Carlo samplers to estimate inclusive KL gradient.
result SMC-Wake method fits variational distributions more accurately than existing methods.
This paper bridges variational inference and Wasserstein gradient flows.
problem Combining variational inference and Wasserstein gradient flows for more efficient approximations.
method Recasting Bures-Wasserstein gradient flow as a Euclidean gradient flow and using path-derivative gradient estimator.
result A new gradient estimator for -divergences that can be implemented using machine learning libraries.
VI struggles to fully quantify uncertainty when distributions don't factorize.
problem Uncertainty quantification in non-factorizable distributions.
method Analysis of variational inference trade-offs and divergence choices.
result Different divergences yield different measures of uncertainty in VI.
The paper improves guarantees for VI in symmetric cases.
problem Approximating intractable densities via VI with misspecified families.
method Extends previous robust VI results to wider divergences and non-log-concave targets.
result Guarantees for exact recovery of target mean and correlation matrix under various conditions.
Paper presents variational estimates for EBLVMs without structural assumptions.
problem Challenges in learning and evaluating EBLVMs due to intractable true posteriors and partition functions.
method Variational estimates of the score function and its gradient (VaES and VaGES) in a general EBLVM.
result The estimates can be applied to KSD and SM-based methods to learn EBLVMs and estimate Fisher divergence.
The paper develops sum-of-squares relaxations for computing -divergences.
problem Computing -divergences from non-centered covariance matrices.
method Sum-of-squares relaxations for convex optimization.
result Sum-of-squares relaxations make computations tractable.
New samplers minimize KL divergence for constrained and non-Euclidean geometries.
problem Efficient sampling from constrained and non-Euclidean distributions.
method Stein Variational Mirror Descent and Mirrored Stein Variational Gradient Descent.
result New samplers converge more rapidly and accurately than prior methods.
New method improves imitation learning from expert observations.
problem Challenges in imitation learning from observation setting.
method Reparameterized Variational Divergence Minimization.
result Our method outperforms baseline approaches in low-dimensional tasks.
We propose a novel interpretation of the collapsed variational Bayes inference with a zero-order Taylor expansion approximation, called CVB0 inference, for latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA). We clarify the properties of the CVB0 inference by using the alpha-divergence. We show that the CVB0 inference is composed of two…
An Easy to Interpret Diagnostic for Approximate Inference: Symmetric Divergence Over Simulationscs.LG
Paper introduces a diagnostic for approximate inference methods.
problem Estimating errors in probabilistic inference algorithms, especially for approximate methods.
method Repeatedly simulate datasets from the prior and perform inference on each, estimating a symmetric KL-divergence.
result A diagnostic for approximate inference methods can be estimated using symmetric KL-divergence.