Correcting Mode Proportion Bias in Generalized Bayesian Inference via a Weighted Kernel Stein Discrepancy

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Afzali, Elham, Muthukumarana, Saman, Wang, Liqun
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Afzali, Elham
Muthukumarana, Saman
Wang, Liqun
author_facet Afzali, Elham
Muthukumarana, Saman
Wang, Liqun
contents Generalized Bayesian Inference (GBI) provides a flexible framework for updating prior distributions using various loss functions instead of the traditional likelihoods, thereby enhancing the model robustness to model misspecification. However, GBI often suffers the problem associated with intractable likelihoods. Kernelized Stein Discrepancy (KSD), as utilized in a recent study, addresses this challenge by relying only on the gradient of the log-likelihood. Despite this innovation, KSD-Bayes suffers from critical pathologies, including insensitivity to well-separated modes in multimodal posteriors. To address this limitation, we propose a weighted KSD method that retains computational efficiency while effectively capturing multimodal structures. Our method improves the GBI framework for handling intractable multimodal posteriors while maintaining key theoretical properties such as posterior consistency and asymptotic normality. Experimental results demonstrate that our method substantially improves mode sensitivity compared to standard KSD-Bayes, while retaining robust performance in unimodal settings and in the presence of outliers.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_02108
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Correcting Mode Proportion Bias in Generalized Bayesian Inference via a Weighted Kernel Stein Discrepancy
Afzali, Elham
Muthukumarana, Saman
Wang, Liqun
Machine Learning
Methodology
62F15, 62G20, 62H12, 62E17, 60B20, 46E22
Generalized Bayesian Inference (GBI) provides a flexible framework for updating prior distributions using various loss functions instead of the traditional likelihoods, thereby enhancing the model robustness to model misspecification. However, GBI often suffers the problem associated with intractable likelihoods. Kernelized Stein Discrepancy (KSD), as utilized in a recent study, addresses this challenge by relying only on the gradient of the log-likelihood. Despite this innovation, KSD-Bayes suffers from critical pathologies, including insensitivity to well-separated modes in multimodal posteriors. To address this limitation, we propose a weighted KSD method that retains computational efficiency while effectively capturing multimodal structures. Our method improves the GBI framework for handling intractable multimodal posteriors while maintaining key theoretical properties such as posterior consistency and asymptotic normality. Experimental results demonstrate that our method substantially improves mode sensitivity compared to standard KSD-Bayes, while retaining robust performance in unimodal settings and in the presence of outliers.
title Correcting Mode Proportion Bias in Generalized Bayesian Inference via a Weighted Kernel Stein Discrepancy
topic Machine Learning
Methodology
62F15, 62G20, 62H12, 62E17, 60B20, 46E22
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.02108