arXiv subjects

José Miguel Hernández-Lobato

Publications and source records attributed to José Miguel Hernández-Lobato.

153 records · Page 9Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

Scalable Gaussian Process Classification via Expectation Propagation

Variational methods have been recently considered for scaling the training process of Gaussian process classifiers to large datasets. As an alternative, we describe here how to train these classifiers efficiently using expectation propagation. The proposed method allows for handling datasets with millions of data instances. More precisely, it can be used for (i) training in a distributed fashion where the data instances are sent to different nodes in which the required computations are carried out, and for (ii) maximizing an estimate of the marginal likelihood using a stochastic approximation of the gradient. Several experiments indicate that the method described is competitive with the variational approach.

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arXiv2015

Predictive Entropy Search for Bayesian Optimization with Unknown Constraints

Unknown constraints arise in many types of expensive black-box optimization problems. Several methods have been proposed recently for performing Bayesian optimization with constraints, based on the expected improvement (EI) heuristic. However, EI can lead to pathologies when used with constraints. For example, in the case of decoupled constraints---i.e., when one can independently evaluate the objective or the constraints---EI can encounter a pathology that prevents exploration. Additionally, computing EI requires a current best solution, which may not exist if none of the data collected so far satisfy the constraints. By contrast, information-based approaches do not suffer from these failure modes. In this paper, we present a new information-based method called Predictive Entropy Search with Constraints (PESC). We analyze the performance of PESC and show that it compares favorably to EI-based approaches on synthetic and benchmark problems, as well as several real-world examples. We demonstrate that PESC is an effective algorithm that provides a promising direction towards a unified solution for constrained Bayesian optimization.

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arXiv2015

Probabilistic Backpropagation for Scalable Learning of Bayesian Neural Networks

Large multilayer neural networks trained with backpropagation have recently achieved state-of-the-art results in a wide range of problems. However, using backprop for neural net learning still has some disadvantages, e.g., having to tune a large number of hyperparameters to the data, lack of calibrated probabilistic predictions, and a tendency to overfit the training data. In principle, the Bayesian approach to learning neural networks does not have these problems. However, existing Bayesian techniques lack scalability to large dataset and network sizes. In this work we present a novel scalable method for learning Bayesian neural networks, called probabilistic backpropagation (PBP). Similar to classical backpropagation, PBP works by computing a forward propagation of probabilities through the network and then doing a backward computation of gradients. A series of experiments on ten real-world datasets show that PBP is significantly faster than other techniques, while offering competitive predictive abilities. Our experiments also show that PBP provides accurate estimates of the posterior variance on the network weights.

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arXiv2014

Predictive Entropy Search for Efficient Global Optimization of Black-box Functions

We propose a novel information-theoretic approach for Bayesian optimization called Predictive Entropy Search (PES). At each iteration, PES selects the next evaluation point that maximizes the expected information gained with respect to the global maximum. PES codifies this intractable acquisition function in terms of the expected reduction in the differential entropy of the predictive distribution. This reformulation allows PES to obtain approximations that are both more accurate and efficient than other alternatives such as Entropy Search (ES). Furthermore, PES can easily perform a fully Bayesian treatment of the model hyperparameters while ES cannot. We evaluate PES in both synthetic and real-world applications, including optimization problems in machine learning, finance, biotechnology, and robotics. We show that the increased accuracy of PES leads to significant gains in optimization performance.

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arXiv2013

Gaussian Process Conditional Copulas with Applications to Financial Time Series

The estimation of dependencies between multiple variables is a central problem in the analysis of financial time series. A common approach is to express these dependencies in terms of a copula function. Typically the copula function is assumed to be constant but this may be inaccurate when there are covariates that could have a large influence on the dependence structure of the data. To account for this, a Bayesian framework for the estimation of conditional copulas is proposed. In this framework the parameters of a copula are non-linearly related to some arbitrary conditioning variables. We evaluate the ability of our method to predict time-varying dependencies on several equities and currencies and observe consistent performance gains compared to static copula models and other time-varying copula methods.

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arXiv2013

Dynamic Covariance Models for Multivariate Financial Time Series

The accurate prediction of time-changing covariances is an important problem in the modeling of multivariate financial data. However, some of the most popular models suffer from a) overfitting problems and multiple local optima, b) failure to capture shifts in market conditions and c) large computational costs. To address these problems we introduce a novel dynamic model for time-changing covariances. Over-fitting and local optima are avoided by following a Bayesian approach instead of computing point estimates. Changes in market conditions are captured by assuming a diffusion process in parameter values, and finally computationally efficient and scalable inference is performed using particle filters. Experiments with financial data show excellent performance of the proposed method with respect to current standard models.

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arXiv2013

Gaussian Process Vine Copulas for Multivariate Dependence

Copulas allow to learn marginal distributions separately from the multivariate dependence structure (copula) that links them together into a density function. Vine factorizations ease the learning of high-dimensional copulas by constructing a hierarchy of conditional bivariate copulas. However, to simplify inference, it is common to assume that each of these conditional bivariate copulas is independent from its conditioning variables. In this paper, we relax this assumption by discovering the latent functions that specify the shape of a conditional copula given its conditioning variables We learn these functions by following a Bayesian approach based on sparse Gaussian processes with expectation propagation for scalable, approximate inference. Experiments on real-world datasets show that, when modeling all conditional dependencies, we obtain better estimates of the underlying copula of the data.

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arXiv2013

Semi-Supervised Domain Adaptation with Non-Parametric Copulas

A new framework based on the theory of copulas is proposed to address semi- supervised domain adaptation problems. The presented method factorizes any multivariate density into a product of marginal distributions and bivariate cop- ula functions. Therefore, changes in each of these factors can be detected and corrected to adapt a density model accross different learning domains. Impor- tantly, we introduce a novel vine copula model, which allows for this factorization in a non-parametric manner. Experimental results on regression problems with real-world data illustrate the efficacy of the proposed approach when compared to state-of-the-art techniques.

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arXiv2011

Convergent Expectation Propagation in Linear Models with Spike-and-slab Priors

Exact inference in the linear regression model with spike and slab priors is often intractable. Expectation propagation (EP) can be used for approximate inference. However, the regular sequential form of EP (R-EP) may fail to converge in this model when the size of the training set is very small. As an alternative, we propose a provably convergent EP algorithm (PC-EP). PC-EP is proved to minimize an energy function which, under some constraints, is bounded from below and whose stationary points coincide with the solution of R-EP. Experiments with synthetic data indicate that when R-EP does not converge, the approximation generated by PC-EP is often better. By contrast, when R-EP converges, both methods perform similarly.

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