Energy-Based Modelling for Discrete and Mixed Data via Heat Equations on Structured Spaces

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Schröder, Tobias, Ou, Zijing, Li, Yingzhen, Duncan, Andrew B.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Schröder, Tobias
Ou, Zijing
Li, Yingzhen
Duncan, Andrew B.
author_facet Schröder, Tobias
Ou, Zijing
Li, Yingzhen
Duncan, Andrew B.
contents Energy-based models (EBMs) offer a flexible framework for probabilistic modelling across various data domains. However, training EBMs on data in discrete or mixed state spaces poses significant challenges due to the lack of robust and fast sampling methods. In this work, we propose to train discrete EBMs with Energy Discrepancy, a loss function which only requires the evaluation of the energy function at data points and their perturbed counterparts, thus eliminating the need for Markov chain Monte Carlo. We introduce perturbations of the data distribution by simulating a diffusion process on the discrete state space endowed with a graph structure. This allows us to inform the choice of perturbation from the structure of the modelled discrete variable, while the continuous time parameter enables fine-grained control of the perturbation. Empirically, we demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approaches in a wide range of applications, including the estimation of discrete densities with non-binary vocabulary and binary image modelling. Finally, we train EBMs on tabular data sets with applications in synthetic data generation and calibrated classification.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_01019
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Energy-Based Modelling for Discrete and Mixed Data via Heat Equations on Structured Spaces
Schröder, Tobias
Ou, Zijing
Li, Yingzhen
Duncan, Andrew B.
Machine Learning
Energy-based models (EBMs) offer a flexible framework for probabilistic modelling across various data domains. However, training EBMs on data in discrete or mixed state spaces poses significant challenges due to the lack of robust and fast sampling methods. In this work, we propose to train discrete EBMs with Energy Discrepancy, a loss function which only requires the evaluation of the energy function at data points and their perturbed counterparts, thus eliminating the need for Markov chain Monte Carlo. We introduce perturbations of the data distribution by simulating a diffusion process on the discrete state space endowed with a graph structure. This allows us to inform the choice of perturbation from the structure of the modelled discrete variable, while the continuous time parameter enables fine-grained control of the perturbation. Empirically, we demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approaches in a wide range of applications, including the estimation of discrete densities with non-binary vocabulary and binary image modelling. Finally, we train EBMs on tabular data sets with applications in synthetic data generation and calibrated classification.
title Energy-Based Modelling for Discrete and Mixed Data via Heat Equations on Structured Spaces
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.01019