New framework improves stochastic optimization for variational inference.
problem Improving variational posterior approximations in high-dimensional models.
method Developed a robust stochastic optimization framework using Markov chains.
result Demonstrated improved accuracy and robustness across diverse models.
Derives optimal control conditions using calculus of variations.
problem Optimizing Markov control in stochastic control problems.
method Calculus of variations approach to derive necessary conditions.
result Solves the Merton portfolio optimization problem.
This work proposes a new method for variational inference using Wasserstein gradient descent.
problem Optimizing variational parameters to match a true posterior distribution.
method Reinterpreting VI as an optimization problem over a variational parameter space, using Wasserstein gradient descent.
result The proposed Wasserstein gradient descent can be seen as a generalization of existing optimization techniques in VI.
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…
Improves bandit convex optimization with gradient variations.
problem Bandit Convex Optimization with Gradient Variations.
method Refined analysis of non-consecutive gradient variation.
result Improved dimension dependence for convex and strongly convex functions.
Optimal hedging framework with variational preferences under convex risk measures.
problem Optimal hedging with variational preferences under convex risk measures.
method Theoretical hedging optimization framework with dual representation of risk measures and utilities.
result Derivation of optimality and indifference pricing conditions.
Variational inference is an umbrella term for algorithms which cast Bayesian inference as optimization. Classically, variational inference uses the Kullback-Leibler divergence to define the optimization. Though this divergence has been widely used, the resultant posterior approximation can suffer from undesirable stati…
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.
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…
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.
Combines variational and evolutionary optimization for generative models.
problem Optimizing generative models with discrete latent variables.
method Truncated posteriors as variational distributions, evolutionary algorithms applied to variational parameters.
result Evolutionary algorithms effectively optimize variational bounds for generative models.
Adaptive variational Bayes framework improves inference adaptively.
problem Lack of general and computationally tractable variational Bayes method for adaptive inference.
method Proposes a novel adaptive variational Bayes framework combining variational posteriors over individual models.
result Adaptive variational Bayes achieves optimal contraction rates adaptively under general conditions.
This paper develops scalable control variates for Monte Carlo methods using stochastic optimization.
problem Reducing variance in Monte Carlo estimators for large-scale problems.
method Control variates based on Stein operators, optimized through stochastic optimization.
result Novel theoretical results and empirical validations show effective variance reduction.
Proposes VSGD optimizer combining probabilistic and gradient-based methods.
problem Uncertainty modeling in deep neural networks.
method Combines probabilistic and gradient-based approaches using SVI.
result VSGD outperforms Adam and SGD on image classification tasks.
Derives new optimization methods using variational integrators.
problem Optimization methods in machine learning.
method Variational integrators and principles of Hamilton and Lagrange-d'Alembert.
result Derives two families of optimization methods, including Nesterov's accelerated gradient method.
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…
This work improves variational inference by reducing gradient variance.
problem Hard optimization of flexible variational distributions.
method Control variate based on quadratic approximation of the model's mean and covariance.
result Significant improvement in gradient variance and optimization convergence.
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)…
Variational Proximal Policy Optimization improves reinforcement learning from human feedback.
problem Policy mode collapse and brittle exploration loops in reinforcement learning.
method Particle-based variational inference framework with Mixture-of-Experts architecture.
result Significant improvements in complex reasoning benchmarks.
New method reduces inference variance for faster optimization.
problem High variance in black-box variational inference.
method Joint control variate addressing both data subsampling and Monte Carlo noise.
result Significantly reduced gradient variance, leading to faster optimization.
Kernel semi-implicit variational inference improves variational inference without additional optimization.
problem Intractability of hierarchical semi-implicit distributions in variational inference.
method Kernel semi-implicit variational inference (KSIVI) using kernel methods to eliminate lower-level optimization.
result KSIVI reduces variational inference to kernel Stein discrepancy (KSD) optimization, improving expressiveness and tractability.
Many recent advances in large scale probabilistic inference rely on variational methods. The success of variational approaches depends on (i) formulating a flexible parametric family of distributions, and (ii) optimizing the parameters to find the member of this family that most closely approximates the exact posterior…
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.
The paper compares unrolling and bilevel optimization for learning variational models.
problem Learning variational models in supervised learning.
method Analyzes unrolling and bilevel optimization approaches for variational models.
result Unrolling can be better than bilevel optimization, but performance depends on parameters.
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.
Variational Optimization forms a differentiable upper bound on an objective. We show that approaches such as Natural Evolution Strategies and Gaussian Perturbation, are special cases of Variational Optimization in which the expectations are approximated by Gaussian sampling. These approaches are of particular interest …
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.
Quantum neural tangent kernels help understand variational quantum circuits in machine learning.
problem Designing and predicting performance of variational quantum circuits.
method Using quantum neural tangent kernels and dynamical equations for loss functions.
result Analytical solutions for training dynamics in variational quantum circuits.
AutoBayes simplifies variational inference by composing models and optimizing them.
problem Generalized variational inference complexities and optimization challenges.
method Compositional framework exploiting chain rules for automatic differentiation.
result Optimized models and parameterized statistical games can be locally optimized.
vsOED optimizes experiment design with reinforcement learning for Bayesian models.
problem Optimizing the sequence of experiments in Bayesian models for efficient data collection.
method Reinforcement learning with variational posterior approximations to optimize design policy.
result vsOED achieves superior sample efficiency compared to existing methods.
PVI improves SIVI by directly optimizing ELBO without parametric assumptions.
problem Intractable variational densities in SIVI methods.
method Particle Variational Inference (PVI) using empirical measures to approximate optimal mixing distributions.
result PVI directly optimizes the ELBO and performs favorably compared to other SIVI methods.
This paper presents a novel variational inference framework for deriving a family of Bayesian sparse Gaussian process regression (SGPR) models whose approximations are variationally optimal with respect to the full-rank GPR model enriched with various corresponding correlation structures of the observation noises. Our …
New variational method solves submodular maximum coverage problem efficiently.
problem Submodular maximum coverage problem in various applications.
method Variational optimization using Nemhauser divergence, alternating E and M steps.
result Efficient solution to submodular maximum coverage problem.
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…
Proposes MIVI for efficient posterior estimation and design of MCMC transitions.
problem Efficiently estimating posterior distributions in constrained time.
method Combines variational inference and MCMC with a variational distribution and optimized Markov chain.
result Optimized Markov chain improves variational distribution and vice versa, leading to more accurate posteriors.
Unified approach for first-order methods with Markovian noise in stochastic optimization and variational inequalities.
problem Stochastic optimization problems with Markovian noise.
method Unified theoretical analysis of first-order gradient methods using randomized batching and multilevel Monte Carlo.
result Optimal (linear) dependence on the mixing time of the noise sequence, eliminating previous limiting assumptions.
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.
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.
NVA combines variational posteriors, annealing, and natural-gradient learning for multimodal optimization.
problem Finding multiple global and local modes in nonconvex objectives.
method NVA integrates variational posteriors, annealing, and natural-gradient learning.
result NVA outperforms gradient descent and evolution strategies on simulations and real-world problems.
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.
Develops a method to efficiently compute Wasserstein barycenters with variational distributions.
problem High computational burden in computing Wasserstein barycenters for high-dimensional and continuous settings.
method Introduces a variational distribution to approximate the continuous Wasserstein barycenter, reformulating the problem as an optimization with c-cyclical monotonicity.
result The method provides a tractable dual formulation for efficient computation of Wasserstein barycenters, demonstrated on real applications.
IVON optimizes large neural networks, matching or outperforming Adam.
problem The inefficacy of variational learning in large neural networks.
method Improved Variational Online Newton (IVON) optimizer.
result IVON consistently matches or outperforms Adam for large networks.
Despite the advances in the representational capacity of approximate distributions for variational inference, the optimization process can still limit the density that is ultimately learned. We demonstrate the drawbacks of biasing the true posterior to be unimodal, and introduce Annealed Variational Objectives (AVO) in…
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 …
New framework improves variational inference for high-dimensional posteriors.
problem Challenges in choosing variational objectives and approximating families for high-dimensional posteriors.
method Conceptual framework and experimental tools to understand and optimize variational objectives and families.
result For moderate-to-high-dimensional posteriors, exclusive KL divergence is recommended due to optimization ease; for low-dimensional, heavy-tailed variational families are effective.
Bayesian optimization method tackles combinatorial spaces, scalable for large data.
problem Optimization over combinatorial categorical spaces in natural sciences.
method Combines variational optimization and continuous relaxations for gradient-based optimization.
result Method performs comparably to state-of-the-art methods while scaling well.
A new optimization algorithm for Gaussian Variational Inference on precision matrices.
problem Complex models with positive definite constraints on covariance matrices.
method Manifold Gaussian Variational Bayes (MGVBP) with natural gradient updates.
result Empirically validated as a feasible and efficient solution for VI in complex models.
Variational inference is a powerful approach for approximate posterior inference. However, it is sensitive to initialization and can be subject to poor local optima. In this paper, we develop proximity variational inference (PVI). PVI is a new method for optimizing the variational objective that constrains subsequent i…