Understanding High-Dimensional Bayesian Optimization

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Papenmeier, Leonard, Poloczek, Matthias, Nardi, Luigi
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Papenmeier, Leonard
Poloczek, Matthias
Nardi, Luigi
author_facet Papenmeier, Leonard
Poloczek, Matthias
Nardi, Luigi
contents Recent work reported that simple Bayesian optimization (BO) methods perform well for high-dimensional real-world tasks, seemingly contradicting prior work and tribal knowledge. This paper investigates why. We identify underlying challenges that arise in high-dimensional BO and explain why recent methods succeed. Our empirical analysis shows that vanishing gradients caused by Gaussian process (GP) initialization schemes play a major role in the failures of high-dimensional Bayesian optimization (HDBO) and that methods that promote local search behaviors are better suited for the task. We find that maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) of GP length scales suffices for state-of-the-art performance. Based on this, we propose a simple variant of MLE called MSR that leverages these findings to achieve state-of-the-art performance on a comprehensive set of real-world applications. We present targeted experiments to illustrate and confirm our findings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_09198
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Understanding High-Dimensional Bayesian Optimization
Papenmeier, Leonard
Poloczek, Matthias
Nardi, Luigi
Machine Learning
Recent work reported that simple Bayesian optimization (BO) methods perform well for high-dimensional real-world tasks, seemingly contradicting prior work and tribal knowledge. This paper investigates why. We identify underlying challenges that arise in high-dimensional BO and explain why recent methods succeed. Our empirical analysis shows that vanishing gradients caused by Gaussian process (GP) initialization schemes play a major role in the failures of high-dimensional Bayesian optimization (HDBO) and that methods that promote local search behaviors are better suited for the task. We find that maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) of GP length scales suffices for state-of-the-art performance. Based on this, we propose a simple variant of MLE called MSR that leverages these findings to achieve state-of-the-art performance on a comprehensive set of real-world applications. We present targeted experiments to illustrate and confirm our findings.
title Understanding High-Dimensional Bayesian Optimization
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.09198