Semi-Implicit Functional Gradient Flow for Efficient Sampling

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Shiyue, Cheng, Ziheng, Zhang, Cheng
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Zhang, Shiyue
Cheng, Ziheng
Zhang, Cheng
author_facet Zhang, Shiyue
Cheng, Ziheng
Zhang, Cheng
contents Particle-based variational inference methods (ParVIs) use nonparametric variational families represented by particles to approximate the target distribution according to the kernelized Wasserstein gradient flow for the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence. Although functional gradient flows have been introduced to expand the kernel space for better flexibility, the deterministic updating mechanism may limit exploration and require expensive repetitive runs for new samples. In this paper, we propose Semi-Implicit Functional Gradient flow (SIFG), a functional gradient ParVI method that uses perturbed particles with Gaussian noise as the approximation family. We show that the corresponding functional gradient flow, which can be estimated via denoising score matching with neural networks, exhibits strong theoretical convergence guarantees due to a higher-order smoothness brought to the approximation family via Gaussian perturbation. In addition, we present an adaptive version of our method that automatically selects the appropriate noise magnitude during sampling, striking a good balance between exploration efficiency and approximation accuracy. Extensive experiments on both simulated and real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed framework.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_17935
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Semi-Implicit Functional Gradient Flow for Efficient Sampling
Zhang, Shiyue
Cheng, Ziheng
Zhang, Cheng
Machine Learning
Particle-based variational inference methods (ParVIs) use nonparametric variational families represented by particles to approximate the target distribution according to the kernelized Wasserstein gradient flow for the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence. Although functional gradient flows have been introduced to expand the kernel space for better flexibility, the deterministic updating mechanism may limit exploration and require expensive repetitive runs for new samples. In this paper, we propose Semi-Implicit Functional Gradient flow (SIFG), a functional gradient ParVI method that uses perturbed particles with Gaussian noise as the approximation family. We show that the corresponding functional gradient flow, which can be estimated via denoising score matching with neural networks, exhibits strong theoretical convergence guarantees due to a higher-order smoothness brought to the approximation family via Gaussian perturbation. In addition, we present an adaptive version of our method that automatically selects the appropriate noise magnitude during sampling, striking a good balance between exploration efficiency and approximation accuracy. Extensive experiments on both simulated and real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed framework.
title Semi-Implicit Functional Gradient Flow for Efficient Sampling
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.17935