10,531 research outputs found
Patterns of Scalable Bayesian Inference
Datasets are growing not just in size but in complexity, creating a demand
for rich models and quantification of uncertainty. Bayesian methods are an
excellent fit for this demand, but scaling Bayesian inference is a challenge.
In response to this challenge, there has been considerable recent work based on
varying assumptions about model structure, underlying computational resources,
and the importance of asymptotic correctness. As a result, there is a zoo of
ideas with few clear overarching principles.
In this paper, we seek to identify unifying principles, patterns, and
intuitions for scaling Bayesian inference. We review existing work on utilizing
modern computing resources with both MCMC and variational approximation
techniques. From this taxonomy of ideas, we characterize the general principles
that have proven successful for designing scalable inference procedures and
comment on the path forward
Variable Annealing Length and Parallelism in Simulated Annealing
In this paper, we propose: (a) a restart schedule for an adaptive simulated
annealer, and (b) parallel simulated annealing, with an adaptive and
parameter-free annealing schedule. The foundation of our approach is the
Modified Lam annealing schedule, which adaptively controls the temperature
parameter to track a theoretically ideal rate of acceptance of neighboring
states. A sequential implementation of Modified Lam simulated annealing is
almost parameter-free. However, it requires prior knowledge of the annealing
length. We eliminate this parameter using restarts, with an exponentially
increasing schedule of annealing lengths. We then extend this restart schedule
to parallel implementation, executing several Modified Lam simulated annealers
in parallel, with varying initial annealing lengths, and our proposed parallel
annealing length schedule. To validate our approach, we conduct experiments on
an NP-Hard scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup constraints. We
compare our approach to fixed length restarts, both sequentially and in
parallel. Our results show that our approach can achieve substantial
performance gains, throughout the course of the run, demonstrating our approach
to be an effective anytime algorithm.Comment: Tenth International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, pages 2-10.
June 201
Quantum machine learning: a classical perspective
Recently, increased computational power and data availability, as well as
algorithmic advances, have led machine learning techniques to impressive
results in regression, classification, data-generation and reinforcement
learning tasks. Despite these successes, the proximity to the physical limits
of chip fabrication alongside the increasing size of datasets are motivating a
growing number of researchers to explore the possibility of harnessing the
power of quantum computation to speed-up classical machine learning algorithms.
Here we review the literature in quantum machine learning and discuss
perspectives for a mixed readership of classical machine learning and quantum
computation experts. Particular emphasis will be placed on clarifying the
limitations of quantum algorithms, how they compare with their best classical
counterparts and why quantum resources are expected to provide advantages for
learning problems. Learning in the presence of noise and certain
computationally hard problems in machine learning are identified as promising
directions for the field. Practical questions, like how to upload classical
data into quantum form, will also be addressed.Comment: v3 33 pages; typos corrected and references adde
Scalable and Sustainable Deep Learning via Randomized Hashing
Current deep learning architectures are growing larger in order to learn from
complex datasets. These architectures require giant matrix multiplication
operations to train millions of parameters. Conversely, there is another
growing trend to bring deep learning to low-power, embedded devices. The matrix
operations, associated with both training and testing of deep networks, are
very expensive from a computational and energy standpoint. We present a novel
hashing based technique to drastically reduce the amount of computation needed
to train and test deep networks. Our approach combines recent ideas from
adaptive dropouts and randomized hashing for maximum inner product search to
select the nodes with the highest activation efficiently. Our new algorithm for
deep learning reduces the overall computational cost of forward and
back-propagation by operating on significantly fewer (sparse) nodes. As a
consequence, our algorithm uses only 5% of the total multiplications, while
keeping on average within 1% of the accuracy of the original model. A unique
property of the proposed hashing based back-propagation is that the updates are
always sparse. Due to the sparse gradient updates, our algorithm is ideally
suited for asynchronous and parallel training leading to near linear speedup
with increasing number of cores. We demonstrate the scalability and
sustainability (energy efficiency) of our proposed algorithm via rigorous
experimental evaluations on several real datasets
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