Torchtree: flexible phylogenetic model development and inference using PyTorch

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Fourment, Mathieu, Macaulay, Matthew, Swanepoel, Christiaan J, Ji, Xiang, Suchard, Marc A, Matsen IV, Frederick A
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866929400422858752
author Fourment, Mathieu
Macaulay, Matthew
Swanepoel, Christiaan J
Ji, Xiang
Suchard, Marc A
Matsen IV, Frederick A
author_facet Fourment, Mathieu
Macaulay, Matthew
Swanepoel, Christiaan J
Ji, Xiang
Suchard, Marc A
Matsen IV, Frederick A
contents Bayesian inference has predominantly relied on the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm for many years. However, MCMC is computationally laborious, especially for complex phylogenetic models of time trees. This bottleneck has led to the search for alternatives, such as variational Bayes, which can scale better to large datasets. In this paper, we introduce torchtree, a framework written in Python that allows developers to easily implement rich phylogenetic models and algorithms using a fixed tree topology. One can either use automatic differentiation, or leverage torchtree's plug-in system to compute gradients analytically for model components for which automatic differentiation is slow. We demonstrate that the torchtree variational inference framework performs similarly to BEAST in terms of speed and approximation accuracy. Furthermore, we explore the use of the forward KL divergence as an optimizing criterion for variational inference, which can handle discontinuous and non-differentiable models. Our experiments show that inference using the forward KL divergence tends to be faster per iteration compared to the evidence lower bound (ELBO) criterion, although the ELBO-based inference may converge faster in some cases. Overall, torchtree provides a flexible and efficient framework for phylogenetic model development and inference using PyTorch.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_18044
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Torchtree: flexible phylogenetic model development and inference using PyTorch
Fourment, Mathieu
Macaulay, Matthew
Swanepoel, Christiaan J
Ji, Xiang
Suchard, Marc A
Matsen IV, Frederick A
Populations and Evolution
Computation
Bayesian inference has predominantly relied on the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm for many years. However, MCMC is computationally laborious, especially for complex phylogenetic models of time trees. This bottleneck has led to the search for alternatives, such as variational Bayes, which can scale better to large datasets. In this paper, we introduce torchtree, a framework written in Python that allows developers to easily implement rich phylogenetic models and algorithms using a fixed tree topology. One can either use automatic differentiation, or leverage torchtree's plug-in system to compute gradients analytically for model components for which automatic differentiation is slow. We demonstrate that the torchtree variational inference framework performs similarly to BEAST in terms of speed and approximation accuracy. Furthermore, we explore the use of the forward KL divergence as an optimizing criterion for variational inference, which can handle discontinuous and non-differentiable models. Our experiments show that inference using the forward KL divergence tends to be faster per iteration compared to the evidence lower bound (ELBO) criterion, although the ELBO-based inference may converge faster in some cases. Overall, torchtree provides a flexible and efficient framework for phylogenetic model development and inference using PyTorch.
title Torchtree: flexible phylogenetic model development and inference using PyTorch
topic Populations and Evolution
Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.18044