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How can we automate and scale up the processes of learning accurate probabilistic models of complex data and obtaining principled solutions to probabilistic inference and analysis queries? This thesis presents efficient techniques for addressing these fundamental challenges grounded in probabilistic programming, that is, by representing probabilistic models as computer programs in specialized programming languages. First, I introduce scalable methods for real-time synthesis of probabilistic programs in domain-specific data modeling languages, by performing Bayesian structure learning over hierarchies of symbolic program representations. These methods let us automatically discover accurate and interpretable models in a variety of settings, including cross-sectional data, relational data, and univariate and multivariate time series data; as well as models whose structures are generated by probabilistic context-free grammars. Second, I describe SPPL, a probabilistic programming language that integrates knowledge compilation and symbolic analysis to compute sound exact answers to many Bayesian inference queries about both hand-written and machine-synthesized probabilistic programs. Third, I present fast algorithms for analyzing statistical properties of probabilistic programs in cases where exact inference is intractable. These algorithms operate entirely through black-box computational interfaces to probabilistic programs and solve challenging problems such as estimating bounds on the information flow between arbitrary sets of program variables and testing the convergence of sampling-based algorithms for approximate posterior inference. A large collection of empirical evaluations establish that, taken together, these techniques can outperform multiple state-of-the-art systems across diverse real-world data science problems, which include adapting to extreme novelty in streaming time series data; imputing and forecasting sparse multivariate flu rates; discovering commonsense clusters in relational and temporal macroeconomic data; generating synthetic satellite records with realistic orbital physics; finding information-theoretically optimal medical tests for liver disease and diabetes; and verifying the fairness of machine learning classifiers.
Probabilistic modeling and reasoning are central tasks in artificial intelligence and machine learning. A probabilistic model is a rough description of the world: the model-builder attempts to capture as much detail about the world's complexities as she can, and when no more detail can be given the rest is left as probabilistic uncertainty. Once constructed, the goal of a model is to perform automated inference: compute the probability that some particular fact is true about the world. It is natural for the model-builder to want a flexible expressive language - the world is a complex thing to describe - and over time this has led to a trend of increasingly powerful modeling languages. This trend is taken to its apex by probabilistic programming languages (PPLs), which enable modelers to specify probabilistic models using the facilities of a full programming language. However, this expressivity comes at a cost: the computational cost of inference is in direct tension with the flexibility of the modeling language, and so it becomes increasingly difficult to design automated inference algorithms that scale to the kinds of systems that model builders want to create. This thesis focuses on the central question: how can we design effective probabilistic programming languages that profitably trade-off expressivity and tractability for inference? The approach taken here is first to identify and exploit important structure that a probabilistic program may possess. The kinds of structure considered here are discrete program structure and symmetry. Programs are heterogeneous objects, so different parts of programs may exhibit different kinds of structure; in the second part of the thesis I show how to decompose heterogeneous probabilistic program inference using a notion of program abstraction. These contributions enable new applications of probabilistic programs in domains such as text analysis, verification of probabilistic systems, and classical simulation of quantum algorithms.
This book presents an exciting new synthesis of directed and undirected, discrete and continuous graphical models. Combining elements of Bayesian networks and Markov random fields, the newly introduced hybrid random fields are an interesting approach to get the best of both these worlds, with an added promise of modularity and scalability. The authors have written an enjoyable book---rigorous in the treatment of the mathematical background, but also enlivened by interesting and original historical and philosophical perspectives. -- Manfred Jaeger, Aalborg Universitet The book not only marks an effective direction of investigation with significant experimental advances, but it is also---and perhaps primarily---a guide for the reader through an original trip in the space of probabilistic modeling. While digesting the book, one is enriched with a very open view of the field, with full of stimulating connections. [...] Everyone specifically interested in Bayesian networks and Markov random fields should not miss it. -- Marco Gori, Università degli Studi di Siena Graphical models are sometimes regarded---incorrectly---as an impractical approach to machine learning, assuming that they only work well for low-dimensional applications and discrete-valued domains. While guiding the reader through the major achievements of this research area in a technically detailed yet accessible way, the book is concerned with the presentation and thorough (mathematical and experimental) investigation of a novel paradigm for probabilistic graphical modeling, the hybrid random field. This model subsumes and extends both Bayesian networks and Markov random fields. Moreover, it comes with well-defined learning algorithms, both for discrete and continuous-valued domains, which fit the needs of real-world applications involving large-scale, high-dimensional data.
Probabilistic modeling, as known as probabilistic machine learning, provides a principled framework for learning from data, with the key advantage of offering rigorous solutions for uncertainty quantification. In the era of big and complex data, there is an urgent need for new inference methods in probabilistic modeling to extract information from data effectively and efficiently. This thesis shows how to do theoretically-guaranteed scalable and reliable inference for modern machine learning. Considering both theory and practice, we provide foundational understanding of scalable and reliable inference methods and practical algorithms of new inference methods, as well as extensive empirical evaluation on common machine learning and deep learning tasks. Classical inference algorithms, such as Markov chain Monte Carlo, have enabled probabilistic modeling to achieve gold standard results on many machine learning tasks. However, these algorithms are rarely used in modern machine learning due to the difficulty of scaling up to large datasets. Existing work suggests that there is an inherent trade-off between scalability and reliability, forcing practitioners to choose between expensive exact methods and biased scalable ones. To overcome the current trade-off, we introduce general and theoretically grounded frameworks to enable fast and asymptotically correct inference, with applications to Gibbs sampling, Metropolis-Hastings and Langevin dynamics. Deep neural networks (DNNs) have achieved impressive success on a variety of learning problems in recent years. However, DNNs have been criticized for being unable to estimate uncertainty accurately. Probabilistic modeling provides a principled alternative that can mitigate this issue; they are able to account for model uncertainty and achieve automatic complexity control. In this thesis, we analyze the key challenges of probabilistic inference in deep learning, and present novel approaches for fast posterior inference of neural network weights.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Scalable Uncertainty Management, SUM 2017, which was held in Granada, Spain, in October 2017. The 24 full and 6 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 35 submissions. The book also contains 3 invited papers. Managing uncertainty and inconsistency has been extensively explored in Artificial Intelligence over a number of years. Now, with the advent of massive amounts of data and knowledge from distributed, heterogeneous, and potentially conflicting sources, there is interest in developing and applying formalisms for uncertainty and inconsistency in systems that need to better manage this data and knowledge. The International Conference on Scalable Uncertainty (SUM) aims to provide a forum for researchers who are working on uncertainty management, in different communities and with different uncertainty models, to meet and exchange ideas.
This book provides an overview of the theoretical underpinnings of modern probabilistic programming and presents applications in e.g., machine learning, security, and approximate computing. Comprehensive survey chapters make the material accessible to graduate students and non-experts. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
I’m not usually a fan of edited volumes. Too often they are an incoherent hodgepodge of remnants, renegades, or rejects foisted upon an unsuspecting reading public under a misleading or fraudulent title. The volume Scalable Optimization via Probabilistic Modeling: From Algorithms to Applications is a worthy addition to your library because it succeeds on exactly those dimensions where so many edited volumes fail. For example, take the title, Scalable Optimization via Probabilistic M- eling: From Algorithms to Applications. You need not worry that you’re going to pick up this book and ?nd stray articles about anything else. This book focuseslikealaserbeamononeofthehottesttopicsinevolutionary compu- tion over the last decade or so: estimation of distribution algorithms (EDAs). EDAs borrow evolutionary computation’s population orientation and sel- tionism and throw out the genetics to give us a hybrid of substantial power, elegance, and extensibility. The article sequencing in most edited volumes is hard to understand, but from the get go the editors of this volume have assembled a set of articles sequenced in a logical fashion. The book moves from design to e?ciency enhancement and then concludes with relevant applications. The emphasis on e?ciency enhancement is particularly important, because the data-mining perspectiveimplicitinEDAsopensuptheworldofoptimizationtonewme- ods of data-guided adaptation that can further speed solutions through the construction and utilization of e?ective surrogates, hybrids, and parallel and temporal decompositions.
Artificial Intelligence continues to be one of the most exciting and fast-developing fields of computer science. This book presents the 177 long papers and 123 short papers accepted for ECAI 2016, the latest edition of the biennial European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Europe’s premier venue for presenting scientific results in AI. The conference was held in The Hague, the Netherlands, from August 29 to September 2, 2016. ECAI 2016 also incorporated the conference on Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems (PAIS) 2016, and the Starting AI Researcher Symposium (STAIRS). The papers from PAIS are included in this volume; the papers from STAIRS are published in a separate volume in the Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications (FAIA) series. Organized by the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI) and the Benelux Association for Artificial Intelligence (BNVKI), the ECAI conference provides an opportunity for researchers to present and hear about the very best research in contemporary AI. This proceedings will be of interest to all those seeking an overview of the very latest innovations and developments in this field.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Scalable Uncertainty Management, SUM 2011, held in Dayton, OH, USA, in October 2011. The 32 revised full papers and 3 revised short papers presented together with the abstracts of 2 invited talks and 6 “discussant” contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on argumentation systems, probabilistic inference, dynamic of beliefs, information retrieval and databases, ontologies, possibility theory and classification, logic programming, and applications.