A Stein Gradient Descent Approach for Doubly Intractable Distributions

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Lee, Heesang, Kim, Songhee, Kang, Bokgyeong, Park, Jaewoo
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Lee, Heesang
Kim, Songhee
Kang, Bokgyeong
Park, Jaewoo
author_facet Lee, Heesang
Kim, Songhee
Kang, Bokgyeong
Park, Jaewoo
contents Bayesian inference for doubly intractable distributions is challenging because they include intractable terms, which are functions of parameters of interest. Although several alternatives have been developed for such models, they are computationally intensive due to repeated auxiliary variable simulations. We propose a novel Monte Carlo Stein variational gradient descent (MC-SVGD) approach for inference for doubly intractable distributions. Through an efficient gradient approximation, our MC-SVGD approach rapidly transforms an arbitrary reference distribution to approximate the posterior distribution of interest, without necessitating any predefined variational distribution class for the posterior. Such a transport map is obtained by minimizing Kullback-Leibler divergence between the transformed and posterior distributions in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). We also investigate the convergence rate of the proposed method. We illustrate the application of the method to challenging examples, including a Potts model, an exponential random graph model, and a Conway--Maxwell--Poisson regression model. The proposed method achieves substantial computational gains over existing algorithms, while providing comparable inferential performance for the posterior distributions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_21021
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Stein Gradient Descent Approach for Doubly Intractable Distributions
Lee, Heesang
Kim, Songhee
Kang, Bokgyeong
Park, Jaewoo
Machine Learning
Statistics Theory
Bayesian inference for doubly intractable distributions is challenging because they include intractable terms, which are functions of parameters of interest. Although several alternatives have been developed for such models, they are computationally intensive due to repeated auxiliary variable simulations. We propose a novel Monte Carlo Stein variational gradient descent (MC-SVGD) approach for inference for doubly intractable distributions. Through an efficient gradient approximation, our MC-SVGD approach rapidly transforms an arbitrary reference distribution to approximate the posterior distribution of interest, without necessitating any predefined variational distribution class for the posterior. Such a transport map is obtained by minimizing Kullback-Leibler divergence between the transformed and posterior distributions in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). We also investigate the convergence rate of the proposed method. We illustrate the application of the method to challenging examples, including a Potts model, an exponential random graph model, and a Conway--Maxwell--Poisson regression model. The proposed method achieves substantial computational gains over existing algorithms, while providing comparable inferential performance for the posterior distributions.
title A Stein Gradient Descent Approach for Doubly Intractable Distributions
topic Machine Learning
Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.21021