贝叶斯优化是一种过程，允许获得黑盒功能的全局最佳功能，并且在超参数优化等应用中有用。在目标函数的形状上估计的不确定性估计是引导优化过程的工具。但是，如果客观函数违反基础模型（例如，高斯）的假设，这些估计可能是不准确的。我们提出了一种简单的算法，可以通过目标函数校准后部分布的不确定性作为贝叶斯型优化过程的一部分。我们表明，通过提高校准后分布的不确定性估计，贝叶斯优化使得更好的决策并以较少的步骤到达全球最佳。我们表明，该技术提高了贝叶斯优化对标准基准函数和超参数优化任务的性能。

可预测的不确定性可以通过两个性能 - 校准和清晰度来表征。本文争辩说明这些属性的不确定性，并提出了在深度学习中强制执行它们的简单算法。我们的方法专注于校准 - 分布校准的最强概念 - 并通过用神经估计器拟合低维密度或定量函数来实施它。由此产生的方法比以前的分类和回归方式更简单，更广泛适用。凭经验，我们发现我们的方法改善了几个任务的预测性不确定性，具有最小的计算和实现开销。我们的见解表明，培训深度学习模式的简单和改进方式，导致应准确的不确定性，应利用，以改善下游应用程序的性能。

Methods for reasoning under uncertainty are a key building block of accurate and reliable machine learning systems. Bayesian methods provide a general framework to quantify uncertainty. However, because of model misspecification and the use of approximate inference, Bayesian uncertainty estimates are often inaccurate -for example, a 90% credible interval may not contain the true outcome 90% of the time. Here, we propose a simple procedure for calibrating any regression algorithm; when applied to Bayesian and probabilistic models, it is guaranteed to produce calibrated uncertainty estimates given enough data. Our procedure is inspired by Platt scaling and extends previous work on classification. We evaluate this approach on Bayesian linear regression, feedforward, and recurrent neural networks, and find that it consistently outputs well-calibrated credible intervals while improving performance on time series forecasting and model-based reinforcement learning tasks.

在回归设置中量化不确定性的许多方法中，指定完整量子函数具有吸引力，随着量级可用于解释和评估。预测每个输入的真实条件定量的模型，在所有量化水平上都具有潜在的不确定性的正确和有效的表示。为实现这一目标，许多基于当前的分位式的方法侧重于优化所谓的弹球损失。然而，这种损失限制了适用的回归模型的范围，限制了靶向许多所需特性的能力（例如校准，清晰度，中心间隔），并且可能产生差的条件量数。在这项工作中，我们开发了满足这些缺点的新分位式方法。特别是，我们提出了可以适用于任何类别的回归模型的方法，允许在校准和清晰度之间选择权衡，优化校准中心间隔，并产生更准确的条件定位。我们对我们的方法提供了彻底的实验评估，其中包括核融合中的高维不确定性量化任务。

Bayesian optimization has recently been proposed as a framework for automatically tuning the hyperparameters of machine learning models and has been shown to yield state-of-the-art performance with impressive ease and efficiency. In this paper, we explore whether it is possible to transfer the knowledge gained from previous optimizations to new tasks in order to find optimal hyperparameter settings more efficiently. Our approach is based on extending multi-task Gaussian processes to the framework of Bayesian optimization. We show that this method significantly speeds up the optimization process when compared to the standard single-task approach. We further propose a straightforward extension of our algorithm in order to jointly minimize the average error across multiple tasks and demonstrate how this can be used to greatly speed up k-fold cross-validation. Lastly, we propose an adaptation of a recently developed acquisition function, entropy search, to the cost-sensitive, multi-task setting. We demonstrate the utility of this new acquisition function by leveraging a small dataset to explore hyperparameter settings for a large dataset. Our algorithm dynamically chooses which dataset to query in order to yield the most information per unit cost.

Machine learning algorithms frequently require careful tuning of model hyperparameters, regularization terms, and optimization parameters. Unfortunately, this tuning is often a "black art" that requires expert experience, unwritten rules of thumb, or sometimes brute-force search. Much more appealing is the idea of developing automatic approaches which can optimize the performance of a given learning algorithm to the task at hand. In this work, we consider the automatic tuning problem within the framework of Bayesian optimization, in which a learning algorithm's generalization performance is modeled as a sample from a Gaussian process (GP). The tractable posterior distribution induced by the GP leads to efficient use of the information gathered by previous experiments, enabling optimal choices about what parameters to try next. Here we show how the effects of the Gaussian process prior and the associated inference procedure can have a large impact on the success or failure of Bayesian optimization. We show that thoughtful choices can lead to results that exceed expert-level performance in tuning machine learning algorithms. We also describe new algorithms that take into account the variable cost (duration) of learning experiments and that can leverage the presence of multiple cores for parallel experimentation. We show that these proposed algorithms improve on previous automatic procedures and can reach or surpass human expert-level optimization on a diverse set of contemporary algorithms including latent Dirichlet allocation, structured SVMs and convolutional neural networks.

我们研究了回归中神经网络（NNS）的模型不确定性的方法。为了隔离模型不确定性的效果，我们专注于稀缺训练数据的无噪声环境。我们介绍了关于任何方法都应满足的模型不确定性的五个重要的逃亡者。但是，我们发现，建立的基准通常无法可靠地捕获其中一些逃避者，即使是贝叶斯理论要求的基准。为了解决这个问题，我们介绍了一种新方法来捕获NNS的模型不确定性，我们称之为基于神经优化的模型不确定性（NOMU）。 NOMU的主要思想是设计一个由两个连接的子NN组成的网络体系结构，一个用于模型预测，一个用于模型不确定性，并使用精心设计的损耗函数进行训练。重要的是，我们的设计执行NOMU满足我们的五个Desiderata。由于其模块化体系结构，NOMU可以为任何给定（先前训练）NN提供模型不确定性，如果访问其培训数据。我们在各种回归任务和无嘈杂的贝叶斯优化（BO）中评估NOMU，并具有昂贵的评估。在回归中，NOMU至少和最先进的方法。在BO中，Nomu甚至胜过所有考虑的基准。

采集函数是贝叶斯优化（BO）中的关键组成部分，通常可以写为在替代模型下对效用函数的期望。但是，为了确保采集功能是可以优化的，必须对替代模型和实用程序功能进行限制。为了将BO扩展到更广泛的模型和实用程序，我们提出了不含可能性的BO（LFBO），这是一种基于无似然推理的方法。 LFBO直接对采集函数进行建模，而无需单独使用概率替代模型进行推断。我们表明，可以将计算LFBO中的采集函数缩小为优化加权分类问题，而权重对应于所选择的实用程序。通过为预期改进选择实用程序功能，LFBO在几个现实世界优化问题上都优于各种最新的黑盒优化方法。 LFBO还可以有效利用目标函数的复合结构，从而进一步改善了其遗憾。

Accurate uncertainty measurement is a key step to building robust and reliable machine learning systems. Conformal prediction is a distribution-free uncertainty quantification algorithm popular for its ease of implementation, statistical coverage guarantees, and versatility for underlying forecasters. However, existing conformal prediction algorithms for time series are limited to single-step prediction without considering the temporal dependency. In this paper we propose a Copula Conformal Prediction algorithm for multivariate, multi-step Time Series forecasting, CopulaCPTS. On several synthetic and real-world multivariate time series datasets, we show that CopulaCPTS produces more calibrated and sharp confidence intervals for multi-step prediction tasks than existing techniques.

在过去几十年中，已经提出了各种方法，用于估计回归设置中的预测间隔，包括贝叶斯方法，集合方法，直接间隔估计方法和保形预测方法。重要问题是这些方法的校准：生成的预测间隔应该具有预定义的覆盖水平，而不会过于保守。在这项工作中，我们从概念和实验的角度审查上述四类方法。结果来自各个域的基准数据集突出显示从一个数据集中的性能的大波动。这些观察可能归因于违反某些类别的某些方法所固有的某些假设。我们说明了如何将共形预测用作提供不具有校准步骤的方法的方法的一般校准程序。

贝叶斯优化（BO）算法在涉及昂贵的黑盒功能的应用中表现出了显着的成功。传统上，BO被设置为一个顺序决策过程，该过程通过采集函数和先前的功能（例如高斯过程）来估计查询点的实用性。然而，最近，通过密度比率估计（BORE）对BO进行重新制定允许将采集函数重新诠释为概率二进制分类器，从而消除了对函数的显式先验和提高可伸缩性的需求。在本文中，我们介绍了对孔的遗憾和算法扩展的理论分析，并提高了不确定性估计。我们还表明，通过将问题重新提交为近似贝叶斯推断，可以自然地扩展到批处理优化设置。所得算法配备了理论性能保证，并在一系列实验中对其他批处理基本线进行了评估。

Deep learning models that leverage large datasets are often the state of the art for modelling molecular properties. When the datasets are smaller (< 2000 molecules), it is not clear that deep learning approaches are the right modelling tool. In this work we perform an extensive study of the calibration and generalizability of probabilistic machine learning models on small chemical datasets. Using different molecular representations and models, we analyse the quality of their predictions and uncertainties in a variety of tasks (binary, regression) and datasets. We also introduce two simulated experiments that evaluate their performance: (1) Bayesian optimization guided molecular design, (2) inference on out-of-distribution data via ablated cluster splits. We offer practical insights into model and feature choice for modelling small chemical datasets, a common scenario in new chemical experiments. We have packaged our analysis into the DIONYSUS repository, which is open sourced to aid in reproducibility and extension to new datasets.

本文介绍了分类器校准原理和实践的简介和详细概述。校准的分类器正确地量化了与其实例明智的预测相关的不确定性或信心水平。这对于关键应用，最佳决策，成本敏感的分类以及某些类型的上下文变化至关重要。校准研究具有丰富的历史，其中几十年来预测机器学习作为学术领域的诞生。然而，校准兴趣的最近增加导致了新的方法和从二进制到多种子体设置的扩展。需要考虑的选项和问题的空间很大，并导航它需要正确的概念和工具集。我们提供了主要概念和方法的介绍性材料和最新的技术细节，包括适当的评分规则和其他评估指标，可视化方法，全面陈述二进制和多字数分类的HOC校准方法，以及几个先进的话题。

贝叶斯优化（BO）被广泛用于优化随机黑匣子功能。尽管大多数BO方法都集中在优化条件期望上，但许多应用程序都需要规避风险的策略，并且需要考虑分配尾巴的替代标准。在本文中，我们提出了针对贝叶斯分位数和预期回归的新变异模型，这些模型非常适合异形的噪声设置。我们的模型分别由有条件分位数（或期望）的两个潜在高斯过程和不对称可能性函数的比例参数组成。此外，我们提出了基于最大值熵搜索和汤普森采样的两种BO策略，这些策略是针对此类型号量身定制的，可以容纳大量点。与现有的BO进行规避风险优化的方法相反，我们的策略可以直接针对分位数和预期进行优化，而无需复制观测值或假设噪声的参数形式。如实验部分所示，所提出的方法清楚地表现出异质的非高斯案例中的最新状态。

黑匣子优化需要指定搜索空间以探索解决方案，例如解决方案。 D维紧凑空间，此选择对于以合理的预算获得最佳结果至关重要。不幸的是，在许多应用中确定高质量的搜索空间可能具有挑战性。例如，当在给出有限的预算时调整机器学习管道的机器学习管道时，必须在不包括潜在有前途的地区之间进行平衡，并将搜索空间保持足够小以易于发动。这项工作的目标是激励 - 通过调整深度神经网络的示例应用程序 - 预测预算条件的搜索空间质量的问题，以及提供基于应用于a的实用程序功能的简单评分方法概率响应表面模型，类似于贝叶斯优化。我们表明我们所呈现的方法可以在各种情况下计算有意义的预算条件分数。我们还提供实验证据，即精确的分数可用于构建和修剪搜索空间。最终，我们认为评分搜索空间应该成为深度学习实验工作流程中的标准实践。

In robotics, optimizing controller parameters under safety constraints is an important challenge. Safe Bayesian optimization (BO) quantifies uncertainty in the objective and constraints to safely guide exploration in such settings. Hand-designing a suitable probabilistic model can be challenging, however. In the presence of unknown safety constraints, it is crucial to choose reliable model hyper-parameters to avoid safety violations. Here, we propose a data-driven approach to this problem by meta-learning priors for safe BO from offline data. We build on a meta-learning algorithm, F-PACOH, capable of providing reliable uncertainty quantification in settings of data scarcity. As core contribution, we develop a novel framework for choosing safety-compliant priors in a data-riven manner via empirical uncertainty metrics and a frontier search algorithm. On benchmark functions and a high-precision motion system, we demonstrate that our meta-learned priors accelerate the convergence of safe BO approaches while maintaining safety.

当数据稀缺时，元学习可以通过利用相关的学习任务的先前经验来提高学习者的准确性。然而，现有方法具有不可靠的不确定性估计，通常过于自信。解决这些缺点，我们介绍了一个名为F-PACOH的新型元学习框架，该框架称为F-PACOH，该框架将Meta学习的前沿视为随机过程，并直接在函数空间中执行元级正则化。这使我们能够直接转向元学习者在元区域训练数据区域中对高至少认知不确定性的概率预测，从而获得良好的不确定性估计。最后，我们展示了我们的方法如何与顺序决策集成，其中可靠的不确定性量化是必要的。在我们对贝叶斯优化（BO）的元学习的基准研究中，F-PACOH显着优于所有其他元学习者和标准基线。

Bayesian optimization is an effective methodology for the global optimization of functions with expensive evaluations. It relies on querying a distribution over functions defined by a relatively cheap surrogate model. An accurate model for this distribution over functions is critical to the effectiveness of the approach, and is typically fit using Gaussian processes (GPs). However, since GPs scale cubically with the number of observations, it has been challenging to handle objectives whose optimization requires many evaluations, and as such, massively parallelizing the optimization.In this work, we explore the use of neural networks as an alternative to GPs to model distributions over functions. We show that performing adaptive basis function regression with a neural network as the parametric form performs competitively with state-of-the-art GP-based approaches, but scales linearly with the number of data rather than cubically. This allows us to achieve a previously intractable degree of parallelism, which we apply to large scale hyperparameter optimization, rapidly finding competitive models on benchmark object recognition tasks using convolutional networks, and image caption generation using neural language models.

有效的决策需要了解预测中固有的不确定性。在回归中，这种不确定性可以通过各种方法估算;然而，许多这些方法对调谐进行费力，产生过度自确性的不确定性间隔，或缺乏敏锐度（给予不精确的间隔）。我们通过提出一种通过定义具有两个不同损失功能的神经网络来捕获回归中的预测分布的新方法来解决这些挑战。具体地，一个网络近似于累积分布函数，第二网络近似于其逆。我们将此方法称为合作网络（CN）。理论分析表明，优化的固定点处于理想化的解决方案，并且该方法是渐近的与地面真理分布一致。凭经验，学习是简单且强大的。我们基准CN对两个合成和六个现实世界数据集的几种常见方法，包括预测来自电子健康记录的糖尿病患者的A1C值，其中不确定是至关重要的。在合成数据中，所提出的方法与基本上匹配地面真理。在真实世界数据集中，CN提高了许多性能度量的结果，包括对数似然估计，平均误差，覆盖估计和预测间隔宽度。

Configurable software systems are employed in many important application domains. Understanding the performance of the systems under all configurations is critical to prevent potential performance issues caused by misconfiguration. However, as the number of configurations can be prohibitively large, it is not possible to measure the system performance under all configurations. Thus, a common approach is to build a prediction model from a limited measurement data to predict the performance of all configurations as scalar values. However, it has been pointed out that there are different sources of uncertainty coming from the data collection or the modeling process, which can make the scalar predictions not certainly accurate. To address this problem, we propose a Bayesian deep learning based method, namely BDLPerf, that can incorporate uncertainty into the prediction model. BDLPerf can provide both scalar predictions for configurations' performance and the corresponding confidence intervals of these scalar predictions. We also develop a novel uncertainty calibration technique to ensure the reliability of the confidence intervals generated by a Bayesian prediction model. Finally, we suggest an efficient hyperparameter tuning technique so as to train the prediction model within a reasonable amount of time whilst achieving high accuracy. Our experimental results on 10 real-world systems show that BDLPerf achieves higher accuracy than existing approaches, in both scalar performance prediction and confidence interval estimation.