Variational inference has become a widely used method to approximate posteriors in complex latent variables models. However, deriving a variational inference algorithm generally requires significant model-specific analysis, and these efforts can hinder and deter us from quickly developing and exploring a variety of models for a problem at hand. In this paper, we present a "black box" variational inference algorithm, one that can be quickly applied to many models with little additional derivation. Our method is based on a stochastic optimization of the variational objective where the noisy gradient is computed from Monte Carlo samples from the variational distribution. We develop a number of methods to reduce the variance of the gradient, always maintaining the criterion that we want to avoid difficult model-based derivations. We evaluate our method against the corresponding black box sampling based methods. We find that our method reaches better predictive likelihoods much faster than sampling methods. Finally, we demonstrate that Black Box Variational Inference lets us easily explore a wide space of models by quickly constructing and evaluating several models of longitudinal healthcare data.

One of the core problems of modern statistics is to approximate difficult-to-compute probability densities. This problem is especially important in Bayesian statistics, which frames all inference about unknown quantities as a calculation involving the posterior density. In this paper, we review variational inference (VI), a method from machine learning that approximates probability densities through optimization. VI has been used in many applications and tends to be faster than classical methods, such as Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling. The idea behind VI is to first posit a family of densities and then to find the member of that family which is close to the target. Closeness is measured by Kullback-Leibler divergence. We review the ideas behind mean-field variational inference, discuss the special case of VI applied to exponential family models, present a full example with a Bayesian mixture of Gaussians, and derive a variant that uses stochastic optimization to scale up to massive data. We discuss modern research in VI and highlight important open problems. VI is powerful, but it is not yet well understood. Our hope in writing this paper is to catalyze statistical research on this class of algorithms.

We develop stochastic variational inference, a scalable algorithm for approximating posterior distributions. We develop this technique for a large class of probabilistic models and we demonstrate it with two probabilistic topic models, latent Dirichlet allocation and the hierarchical Dirichlet process topic model. Using stochastic variational inference, we analyze several large collections of documents: 300K articles from Nature, 1.8M articles from The New York Times, and 3.8M articles from Wikipedia. Stochastic inference can easily handle data sets of this size and outperforms traditional variational inference, which can only handle a smaller subset. (We also show that the Bayesian nonparametric topic model outperforms its parametric counterpart.) Stochastic variational inference lets us apply complex Bayesian models to massive data sets.

Variational inference uses optimization, rather than integration, to approximate the marginal likelihood, and thereby the posterior, in a Bayesian model. Thanks to advances in computational scalability made in the last decade, variational inference is now the preferred choice for many high-dimensional models and large datasets. This tutorial introduces variational inference from the parametric perspective that dominates these recent developments, in contrast to the mean-field perspective commonly found in other introductory texts.

How can we perform efficient inference and learning in directed probabilistic models, in the presence of continuous latent variables with intractable posterior distributions, and large datasets? We introduce a stochastic variational inference and learning algorithm that scales to large datasets and, under some mild differentiability conditions, even works in the intractable case. Our contributions is two-fold. First, we show that a reparameterization of the variational lower bound yields a lower bound estimator that can be straightforwardly optimized using standard stochastic gradient methods. Second, we show that for i.i.d. datasets with continuous latent variables per datapoint, posterior inference can be made especially efficient by fitting an approximate inference model (also called a recognition model) to the intractable posterior using the proposed lower bound estimator. Theoretical advantages are reflected in experimental results.

变异推理（VI）的核心原理是将计算复杂后概率密度计算的统计推断问题转换为可拖动的优化问题。该属性使VI比几种基于采样的技术更快。但是，传统的VI算法无法扩展到大型数据集，并且无法轻易推断出越野数据点，而无需重新运行优化过程。该领域的最新发展，例如随机，黑框和摊销VI，已帮助解决了这些问题。如今，生成的建模任务广泛利用摊销VI来实现其效率和可扩展性，因为它利用参数化函数来学习近似的后验密度参数。在本文中，我们回顾了各种VI技术的数学基础，以构成理解摊销VI的基础。此外，我们还概述了最近解决摊销VI问题的趋势，例如摊销差距，泛化问题，不一致的表示学习和后验崩溃。最后，我们分析了改善VI优化的替代差异度量。

We develop an optimization algorithm suitable for Bayesian learning in complex models. Our approach relies on natural gradient updates within a general black-box framework for efficient training with limited model-specific derivations. It applies within the class of exponential-family variational posterior distributions, for which we extensively discuss the Gaussian case for which the updates have a rather simple form. Our Quasi Black-box Variational Inference (QBVI) framework is readily applicable to a wide class of Bayesian inference problems and is of simple implementation as the updates of the variational posterior do not involve gradients with respect to the model parameters, nor the prescription of the Fisher information matrix. We develop QBVI under different hypotheses for the posterior covariance matrix, discuss details about its robust and feasible implementation, and provide a number of real-world applications to demonstrate its effectiveness.

We marry ideas from deep neural networks and approximate Bayesian inference to derive a generalised class of deep, directed generative models, endowed with a new algorithm for scalable inference and learning. Our algorithm introduces a recognition model to represent an approximate posterior distribution and uses this for optimisation of a variational lower bound. We develop stochastic backpropagation -rules for gradient backpropagation through stochastic variables -and derive an algorithm that allows for joint optimisation of the parameters of both the generative and recognition models. We demonstrate on several real-world data sets that by using stochastic backpropagation and variational inference, we obtain models that are able to generate realistic samples of data, allow for accurate imputations of missing data, and provide a useful tool for high-dimensional data visualisation.

我们提出了使用多级蒙特卡罗（MLMC）方法的变分推理的差异减少框架。我们的框架是基于Reparameterized梯度估计的梯度估计，并在优化中从过去更新历史记录获得的“回收”参数。此外，我们的框架还提供了一种基于随机梯度下降（SGD）的新优化算法，其自适应地估计根据梯度方差的比率用于梯度估计的样本大小。理论上，通过我们的方法，梯度估计器的方差随着优化进行而降低，并且学习率调度器函数有助于提高收敛。我们还表明，就\ Texit {信噪比}比率而言，我们的方法可以通过提高初始样本大小来提高学习速率调度器功能的梯度估计的质量。最后，我们确认我们的方法通过使用多个基准数据集的基线方法的实验比较来实现更快的收敛性并降低梯度估计器的方差，并降低了与其他方法相比的其他方法。

由于本地潜在变量的数量与数据集缩放，因此难以使用分层模型中的变分推理。因此，分层模型中的推断仍然是大规模的挑战。使用与后部匹配的结构进行变形家庭是有帮助的，但由于局部分布的巨大数量，优化仍然缓慢。相反，本文建议摊销方法，其中共享参数同时表示所有本地分布。这种方法类似地是使用给定的联合分布（例如，全级高斯），但在数据集上是可行的，这些数量幅度较大。它也比使用结构化的变分布速度更快。

We investigate a local reparameterizaton technique for greatly reducing the variance of stochastic gradients for variational Bayesian inference (SGVB) of a posterior over model parameters, while retaining parallelizability. This local reparameterization translates uncertainty about global parameters into local noise that is independent across datapoints in the minibatch. Such parameterizations can be trivially parallelized and have variance that is inversely proportional to the minibatch size, generally leading to much faster convergence. Additionally, we explore a connection with dropout: Gaussian dropout objectives correspond to SGVB with local reparameterization, a scale-invariant prior and proportionally fixed posterior variance. Our method allows inference of more flexibly parameterized posteriors; specifically, we propose variational dropout, a generalization of Gaussian dropout where the dropout rates are learned, often leading to better models. The method is demonstrated through several experiments.

近似复杂的概率密度是现代统计中的核心问题。在本文中，我们介绍了变分推理（VI）的概念，这是一种机器学习中的流行方法，该方法使用优化技术来估计复杂的概率密度。此属性允许VI汇聚速度比经典方法更快，例如Markov Chain Monte Carlo采样。概念上，VI通过选择一个概率密度函数，然后找到最接近实际概率密度的家庭 - 通常使用Kullback-Leibler（KL）发散作为优化度量。我们介绍了缩窄的证据，以促进近似的概率密度，我们审查了平均场变分推理背后的想法。最后，我们讨论VI对变分式自动编码器（VAE）和VAE-生成的对抗网络（VAE-GAN）的应用。用本文，我们的目标是解释VI的概念，并通过这种方法协助协助。

概率分布允许从业者发现数据中的隐藏结构，并构建模型，以使用有限的数据解决监督的学习问题。该报告的重点是变异自动编码器，这是一种学习大型复杂数据集概率分布的方法。该报告提供了对变异自动编码器的理论理解，并巩固了该领域的当前研究。该报告分为多个章节，第一章介绍了问题，描述了变异自动编码器并标识了该领域的关键研究方向。第2、3、4和5章深入研究了每个关键研究领域的细节。第6章总结了报告，并提出了未来工作的指示。具有机器学习基本思想但想了解机器学习研究中的一般主题的读者可以从报告中受益。该报告解释了有关学习概率分布的中心思想，人们为使这种危险做些什么，并介绍了有关当前如何应用深度学习的细节。该报告还为希望为这个子场做出贡献的人提供了温和的介绍。

贝叶斯神经网络具有潜在变量（BNN + LVS）通过明确建模模型不确定性（通过网络权重）和环境暂停（通过潜在输入噪声变量）来捕获预测的不确定性。在这项工作中，我们首先表明BNN + LV具有严重形式的非可识别性：可以在模型参数和潜在变量之间传输解释性，同时拟合数据。我们证明，在无限数据的极限中，网络权重和潜变量的后部模式从地面真理渐近地偏离。由于这种渐近偏差，传统的推理方法可以在实践中，产量参数概括不确定和不确定的不确定性。接下来，我们开发一种新推断过程，明确地减轻了训练期间不可识别性的影响，并产生高质量的预测以及不确定性估计。我们展示我们的推理方法在一系列合成和实际数据集中改善了基准方法。

贝叶斯方法通过使用后部分布估计不确定性的衡量。这些方法中的一个难度来源是计算常规常量的计算。计算精确的后验通常是棘手的，并且我们通常近似它。变分推理（VI）方法近似使用优化通常从简单的家庭中选择的分发。描述了这项工作的主要贡献是一种用于自然梯度变分推理的一组更新规则，与高斯的混合，可以为每个混合组分独立地运行，潜在地并联。

我们提出了一种新的非参数混合物模型，用于多变量回归问题，灵感来自概率K-Nearthimest邻居算法。使用有条件指定的模型，对样本外输入的预测基于与每个观察到的数据点的相似性，从而产生高斯混合物表示的预测分布。在混合物组件的参数以及距离度量标准的参数上，使用平均场变化贝叶斯算法进行后推断，并具有基于随机梯度的优化过程。在与数据大小相比，输入 - 输出关系很复杂，预测分布可能偏向或多模式的情况下，输入相对较高的尺寸，该方法尤其有利。对五个数据集进行的计算研究，其中两个是合成生成的，这说明了我们的高维输入的专家混合物方法的明显优势，在验证指标和视觉检查方面都优于竞争者模型。

在诸如增强学习和变分自动编码器（VAE）培训等上下文中，梯度估计通常是将生成模型与离散潜在变量拟合的必要条件。撤销估计器（Yin等，2020; Dong，Mnih和Tucker 2020）在许多情况下实现了Bernoulli潜在变量模型的最新梯度差异。然而，撤消和其他估计器在参数空间的边界附近可能会爆炸方差，而解决方案倾向于存在。为了改善此问题，我们提出了一个新的梯度估计器\ textIt {BitFlip} -1，该{Bitflip} -1在参数空间边界的方差较低。由于BITFLIP-1具有与现有估计器的互补属性，因此我们引入了一个汇总的估计器，\ textIt {无偏梯度方差剪辑}（UGC），该估计量使用BITFLIP-1或每个坐标的摘要梯度更新。从理论上讲，我们证明UGC的差异均高于解除武装。从经验上讲，我们观察到UGC在玩具实验，离散的VAE训练以及最佳子集选择问题中实现了优化目标的最佳价值。

退火重要性采样（AIS）是一种流行的算法，用于估计深层生成模型的棘手边际可能性。尽管AIS可以保证为任何一组超参数提供无偏估计，但共同的实现依赖于简单的启发式方法，例如初始和目标分布之间的几何平均桥接分布，这些分布在计算预算有限时会影响估计性性能。由于使用Markov过渡中的大都市磨碎（MH）校正步骤，因此对完全参数AI的优化仍然具有挑战性。我们提出一个具有灵活中间分布的参数AIS过程，并优化桥接分布以使用较少数量的采样步骤。一种重新聚集方法，它允许我们优化分布序列和Markov转换的参数，该参数适用于具有MH校正的大型Markov内核。我们评估了优化AIS的性能，以进行深层生成模型的边际可能性估计，并将其与其他估计器进行比较。

Recent advances in coreset methods have shown that a selection of representative datapoints can replace massive volumes of data for Bayesian inference, preserving the relevant statistical information and significantly accelerating subsequent downstream tasks. Existing variational coreset constructions rely on either selecting subsets of the observed datapoints, or jointly performing approximate inference and optimizing pseudodata in the observed space akin to inducing points methods in Gaussian Processes. So far, both approaches are limited by complexities in evaluating their objectives for general purpose models, and require generating samples from a typically intractable posterior over the coreset throughout inference and testing. In this work, we present a black-box variational inference framework for coresets that overcomes these constraints and enables principled application of variational coresets to intractable models, such as Bayesian neural networks. We apply our techniques to supervised learning problems, and compare them with existing approaches in the literature for data summarization and inference.

潜在位置网络模型是网络科学的多功能工具;应用程序包括集群实体，控制因果混淆，并在未观察的图形上定义前提。估计每个节点的潜在位置通常是贝叶斯推理问题的群体，吉布斯内的大都市是最流行的近似后分布的工具。然而，众所周知，GIBBS内的大都市对于大型网络而言是低效;接受比计算成本昂贵，并且所得到的后绘高度相关。在本文中，我们提出了一个替代的马尔可夫链蒙特卡罗战略 - 使用分裂哈密顿蒙特卡罗和萤火虫蒙特卡罗的组合定义 - 利用后部分布的功能形式进行更有效的后退计算。我们展示了这些战略在吉布斯和综合网络上的其他算法中优于大都市，以及学区的教师和工作人员的真正信息共享网络。