Timezone: »

 
Poster
Minimization of Continuous Bethe Approximations: A Positive Variation
Jason Pacheco · Erik Sudderth

Tue Dec 04 07:00 PM -- 12:00 AM (PST) @ Harrah’s Special Events Center 2nd Floor
in Poster Session »

We develop convergent minimization algorithms for Bethe variational approximations which explicitly constrain marginal estimates to families of valid distributions. While existing message passing algorithms define fixed point iterations corresponding to stationary points of the Bethe free energy, their greedy dynamics do not distinguish between local minima and maxima, and can fail to converge. For continuous estimation problems, this instability is linked to the creation of invalid marginal estimates, such as Gaussians with negative variance. Conversely, our approach leverages multiplier methods with well-understood convergence properties, and uses bound projection methods to ensure that marginal approximations are valid at all iterations. We derive general algorithms for discrete and Gaussian pairwise Markov random fields, showing improvements over standard loopy belief propagation. We also apply our method to a hybrid model with both discrete and continuous variables, showing improvements over expectation propagation.

[ PDF] 

Author Information

Jason Pacheco (Brown University)
Erik Sudderth (University of California, Irvine)

More from the Same Authors