Improved Finite-Particle Convergence Rates for Stein Variational Gradient Descent

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Main Authors: Banerjee, Sayan, Balasubramanian, Krishnakumar, Ghosal, Promit
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Banerjee, Sayan
Balasubramanian, Krishnakumar
Ghosal, Promit
author_facet Banerjee, Sayan
Balasubramanian, Krishnakumar
Ghosal, Promit
contents We provide finite-particle convergence rates for the Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) algorithm in the Kernelized Stein Discrepancy ($\mathsf{KSD}$) and Wasserstein-2 metrics. Our key insight is that the time derivative of the relative entropy between the joint density of $N$ particle locations and the $N$-fold product target measure, starting from a regular initial distribution, splits into a dominant `negative part' proportional to $N$ times the expected $\mathsf{KSD}^2$ and a smaller `positive part'. This observation leads to $\mathsf{KSD}$ rates of order $1/\sqrt{N}$, in both continuous and discrete time, providing a near optimal (in the sense of matching the corresponding i.i.d. rates) double exponential improvement over the recent result by Shi and Mackey (2024). Under mild assumptions on the kernel and potential, these bounds also grow polynomially in the dimension $d$. By adding a bilinear component to the kernel, the above approach is used to further obtain Wasserstein-2 convergence in continuous time. For the case of `bilinear + Matérn' kernels, we derive Wasserstein-2 rates that exhibit a curse-of-dimensionality similar to the i.i.d. setting. We also obtain marginal convergence and long-time propagation of chaos results for the time-averaged particle laws.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_08469
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Improved Finite-Particle Convergence Rates for Stein Variational Gradient Descent
Banerjee, Sayan
Balasubramanian, Krishnakumar
Ghosal, Promit
Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
Probability
We provide finite-particle convergence rates for the Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) algorithm in the Kernelized Stein Discrepancy ($\mathsf{KSD}$) and Wasserstein-2 metrics. Our key insight is that the time derivative of the relative entropy between the joint density of $N$ particle locations and the $N$-fold product target measure, starting from a regular initial distribution, splits into a dominant `negative part' proportional to $N$ times the expected $\mathsf{KSD}^2$ and a smaller `positive part'. This observation leads to $\mathsf{KSD}$ rates of order $1/\sqrt{N}$, in both continuous and discrete time, providing a near optimal (in the sense of matching the corresponding i.i.d. rates) double exponential improvement over the recent result by Shi and Mackey (2024). Under mild assumptions on the kernel and potential, these bounds also grow polynomially in the dimension $d$. By adding a bilinear component to the kernel, the above approach is used to further obtain Wasserstein-2 convergence in continuous time. For the case of `bilinear + Matérn' kernels, we derive Wasserstein-2 rates that exhibit a curse-of-dimensionality similar to the i.i.d. setting. We also obtain marginal convergence and long-time propagation of chaos results for the time-averaged particle laws.
title Improved Finite-Particle Convergence Rates for Stein Variational Gradient Descent
topic Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.08469