Sourcerer: Sample-based Maximum Entropy Source Distribution Estimation

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Vetter, Julius, Moss, Guy, Schröder, Cornelius, Gao, Richard, Macke, Jakob H.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866913590648242176
author Vetter, Julius
Moss, Guy
Schröder, Cornelius
Gao, Richard
Macke, Jakob H.
author_facet Vetter, Julius
Moss, Guy
Schröder, Cornelius
Gao, Richard
Macke, Jakob H.
contents Scientific modeling applications often require estimating a distribution of parameters consistent with a dataset of observations - an inference task also known as source distribution estimation. This problem can be ill-posed, however, since many different source distributions might produce the same distribution of data-consistent simulations. To make a principled choice among many equally valid sources, we propose an approach which targets the maximum entropy distribution, i.e., prioritizes retaining as much uncertainty as possible. Our method is purely sample-based - leveraging the Sliced-Wasserstein distance to measure the discrepancy between the dataset and simulations - and thus suitable for simulators with intractable likelihoods. We benchmark our method on several tasks, and show that it can recover source distributions with substantially higher entropy than recent source estimation methods, without sacrificing the fidelity of the simulations. Finally, to demonstrate the utility of our approach, we infer source distributions for parameters of the Hodgkin-Huxley model from experimental datasets with thousands of single-neuron measurements. In summary, we propose a principled method for inferring source distributions of scientific simulator parameters while retaining as much uncertainty as possible.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_07808
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sourcerer: Sample-based Maximum Entropy Source Distribution Estimation
Vetter, Julius
Moss, Guy
Schröder, Cornelius
Gao, Richard
Macke, Jakob H.
Machine Learning
Scientific modeling applications often require estimating a distribution of parameters consistent with a dataset of observations - an inference task also known as source distribution estimation. This problem can be ill-posed, however, since many different source distributions might produce the same distribution of data-consistent simulations. To make a principled choice among many equally valid sources, we propose an approach which targets the maximum entropy distribution, i.e., prioritizes retaining as much uncertainty as possible. Our method is purely sample-based - leveraging the Sliced-Wasserstein distance to measure the discrepancy between the dataset and simulations - and thus suitable for simulators with intractable likelihoods. We benchmark our method on several tasks, and show that it can recover source distributions with substantially higher entropy than recent source estimation methods, without sacrificing the fidelity of the simulations. Finally, to demonstrate the utility of our approach, we infer source distributions for parameters of the Hodgkin-Huxley model from experimental datasets with thousands of single-neuron measurements. In summary, we propose a principled method for inferring source distributions of scientific simulator parameters while retaining as much uncertainty as possible.
title Sourcerer: Sample-based Maximum Entropy Source Distribution Estimation
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.07808