Linear Convergence of Black-Box Variational Inference: Should We Stick the Landing?

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Kim, Kyurae, Ma, Yian, Gardner, Jacob R.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
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author Kim, Kyurae
Ma, Yian
Gardner, Jacob R.
author_facet Kim, Kyurae
Ma, Yian
Gardner, Jacob R.
contents We prove that black-box variational inference (BBVI) with control variates, particularly the sticking-the-landing (STL) estimator, converges at a geometric (traditionally called "linear") rate under perfect variational family specification. In particular, we prove a quadratic bound on the gradient variance of the STL estimator, one which encompasses misspecified variational families. Combined with previous works on the quadratic variance condition, this directly implies convergence of BBVI with the use of projected stochastic gradient descent. For the projection operator, we consider a domain with triangular scale matrices, which the projection onto is computable in $Θ(d)$ time, where $d$ is the dimensionality of the target posterior. We also improve existing analysis on the regular closed-form entropy gradient estimators, which enables comparison against the STL estimator, providing explicit non-asymptotic complexity guarantees for both.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2307_14642
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Linear Convergence of Black-Box Variational Inference: Should We Stick the Landing?
Kim, Kyurae
Ma, Yian
Gardner, Jacob R.
Machine Learning
Computation
We prove that black-box variational inference (BBVI) with control variates, particularly the sticking-the-landing (STL) estimator, converges at a geometric (traditionally called "linear") rate under perfect variational family specification. In particular, we prove a quadratic bound on the gradient variance of the STL estimator, one which encompasses misspecified variational families. Combined with previous works on the quadratic variance condition, this directly implies convergence of BBVI with the use of projected stochastic gradient descent. For the projection operator, we consider a domain with triangular scale matrices, which the projection onto is computable in $Θ(d)$ time, where $d$ is the dimensionality of the target posterior. We also improve existing analysis on the regular closed-form entropy gradient estimators, which enables comparison against the STL estimator, providing explicit non-asymptotic complexity guarantees for both.
title Linear Convergence of Black-Box Variational Inference: Should We Stick the Landing?
topic Machine Learning
Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.14642