From Overfitting to Reliability: Introducing the Hierarchical Approximate Bayesian Neural Network

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Amirkhanian, Hayk, Huber, Marco F.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Amirkhanian, Hayk
Huber, Marco F.
author_facet Amirkhanian, Hayk
Huber, Marco F.
contents In recent years, neural networks have revolutionized various domains, yet challenges such as hyperparameter tuning and overfitting remain significant hurdles. Bayesian neural networks offer a framework to address these challenges by incorporating uncertainty directly into the model, yielding more reliable predictions, particularly for out-of-distribution data. This paper presents Hierarchical Approximate Bayesian Neural Network, a novel approach that uses a Gaussian-inverse-Wishart distribution as a hyperprior of the network's weights to increase both the robustness and performance of the model. We provide analytical representations for the predictive distribution and weight posterior, which amount to the calculation of the parameters of Student's t-distributions in closed form with linear complexity with respect to the number of weights. Our method demonstrates robust performance, effectively addressing issues of overfitting and providing reliable uncertainty estimates, particularly for out-of-distribution tasks. Experimental results indicate that HABNN not only matches but often outperforms state-of-the-art models, suggesting a promising direction for future applications in safety-critical environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_13111
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle From Overfitting to Reliability: Introducing the Hierarchical Approximate Bayesian Neural Network
Amirkhanian, Hayk
Huber, Marco F.
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
In recent years, neural networks have revolutionized various domains, yet challenges such as hyperparameter tuning and overfitting remain significant hurdles. Bayesian neural networks offer a framework to address these challenges by incorporating uncertainty directly into the model, yielding more reliable predictions, particularly for out-of-distribution data. This paper presents Hierarchical Approximate Bayesian Neural Network, a novel approach that uses a Gaussian-inverse-Wishart distribution as a hyperprior of the network's weights to increase both the robustness and performance of the model. We provide analytical representations for the predictive distribution and weight posterior, which amount to the calculation of the parameters of Student's t-distributions in closed form with linear complexity with respect to the number of weights. Our method demonstrates robust performance, effectively addressing issues of overfitting and providing reliable uncertainty estimates, particularly for out-of-distribution tasks. Experimental results indicate that HABNN not only matches but often outperforms state-of-the-art models, suggesting a promising direction for future applications in safety-critical environments.
title From Overfitting to Reliability: Introducing the Hierarchical Approximate Bayesian Neural Network
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.13111