In the absence of explicit or tractable likelihoods, Bayesians often resort to approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) for inference. Our work bridges ABC with deep neural implicit samplers based on generative adversarial networks (GANs) and adversarial variational Bayes. Both ABC and GANs compare aspects of observed and fake data to simulate from posteriors and likelihoods, respectively. We develop a Bayesian GAN (B-GAN) sampler that directly targets the posterior by solving an adversarial optimization problem. B-GAN is driven by a deterministic mapping learned on the ABC reference by conditional GANs. Once the mapping has been trained, iid posterior samples are obtained by filtering noise at a negligible additional cost. We propose two post-processing local refinements using (1) data-driven proposals with importance reweighting, and (2) variational Bayes. We support our findings with frequentist-Bayesian results, showing that the typical total variation distance between the true and approximate posteriors converges to zero for certain neural network generators and discriminators. Our findings on simulated data show highly competitive performance relative to some of the most recent likelihood-free posterior simulators.

We develop a multivariate posterior sampling procedure through deep generative quantile learning. Simulation proceeds implicitly through a push-forward mapping that can transform i.i.d. random vectors samples from the posterior. We utilize Monge-Kantorovich depth in multivariate quantiles to directly sample from Bayesian credible sets, a unique feature not offered by typical posterior sampling methods. To enhance training of the quantile mapping, we design a neural network that automatically performs summary statistic extraction. This additional neural network structure has performance benefits including support shrinkage (i.e. contraction of our posterior approximation) as the observation sample size increases. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach on several examples where the absence of likelihood renders classical MCMC infeasible. Finally, we provide the following frequentist theoretical justifications for our quantile learning framework: consistency of the estimated vector quantile, of the recovered posterior distribution, and of the corresponding Bayesian credible sets.

Many asymptotically minimax procedures for function estimation often rely on somewhat arbitrary and restrictive assumptions such as isotropy or spatial homogeneity. This work enhances the theoretical understanding of Bayesian additive regression trees under substantially relaxed smoothness assumptions. We provide a comprehensive study of asymptotic optimality and posterior contraction of Bayesian forests when the regression function has anisotropic smoothness that possibly varies over the function domain. The regression function can also be possibly discontinuous. We introduce a new class of sparse piecewise heterogeneous anisotropic Holder functions and derive their minimax lower bound of estimation in high-dimensional scenarios under the $L_2$-loss. We then find that the Bayesian tree priors, coupled with a Dirichlet subset selection prior for sparse estimation in high-dimensional scenarios, adapt to unknown heterogeneous smoothness, discontinuity, and sparsity. These results show that Bayesian forests are uniquely suited for more general estimation problems that would render other default machine learning tools, such as Gaussian processes, suboptimal. Our numerical study shows that Bayesian forests often outperform other competitors such as random forests and deep neural networks, which are believed to work well for discontinuous or complicated smooth functions. Beyond nonparametric regression, we also examined posterior contraction of Bayesian forests for density estimation and binary classification using the technique developed in this study.

Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) enables statistical inference in simulator-based models whose likelihoods are difficult to calculate but easy to simulate from. ABC constructs a kernel-type approximation to the posterior distribution through an accept/reject mechanism which compares summary statistics of real and simulated data. To obviate the need for summary statistics, we directly compare empirical distributions with a Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence estimator obtained via contrastive learning. In particular, we blend flexible machine learning classifiers within ABC to automate fake/real data comparisons. We consider the traditional accept/reject kernel as well as an exponential weighting scheme which does not require the ABC acceptance threshold. Our theoretical results show that the rate at which our ABC posterior distributions concentrate around the true parameter depends on the estimation error of the classifier. We derive limiting posterior shape results and find that, with a properly scaled exponential kernel, asymptotic normality holds. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach on simulated examples as well as real data in the context of stock volatility estimation.

Deep learning methods continue to have a decided impact on machine learning, both in theory and in practice. Statistical theoretical developments have been mostly concerned with approximability or rates of estimation when recovering infinite dimensional objects (curves or densities). Despite the impressive array of available theoretical results, the literature has been largely silent about uncertainty quantification for deep learning. This paper takes a step forward in this important direction by taking a Bayesian point of view. We study Gaussian approximability of certain aspects of posterior distributions of sparse deep ReLU architectures in non-parametric regression. Building on tools from Bayesian non-parametrics, we provide semi-parametric Bernstein-von Mises theorems for linear and quadratic functionals, which guarantee that implied Bayesian credible regions have valid frequentist coverage. Our results provide new theoretical justifications for (Bayesian) deep learning with ReLU activation functions, highlighting their inferential potential.

There has been a growing realization of the potential of Bayesian machine learning as a platform that can provide both flexible modeling, accurate predictions as well as coherent uncertainty statements. In particular, Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART) have emerged as one of today’s most effective general approaches to predictive modeling under minimal assumptions. Statistical theoretical developments for machine learning have been mostly concerned with approximability or rates of estimation when recovering infinite dimensional objects (curves or densities). Despite the impressive array of available theoretical results, the literature has been largely silent about uncertainty quantification. In this work, we continue the theoretical investigation of BART initiated recently by Rockova and van der Pas (2017). We focus on statistical inference questions. In particular, we study the Bernstein-von Mises (BvM) phenomenon (i.e. asymptotic normality) for smooth linear functionals of the regression surface within the framework of non-parametric regression with fixed covariates. Our semi-parametric BvM results show that, beyond rate-optimal estimation, BART can be also used for valid statistical inference.

Ensemble learning is a statistical paradigm built on the premise that many weak learners can perform exceptionally well when deployed collectively. The BART method of Chipman et al. (2010) is a prominent example of Bayesian ensemble learning, where each learner is a tree. Due to its impressive performance, BART has received a lot of attention from practitioners. Despite its wide popularity, however, theoretical studies of BART have begun emerging only very recently. Laying down foundation for the theoretical analysis of Bayesian forests, Rockova and van der Pas (2017) showed optimal posterior concentration under conditionally uniform tree priors. These priors deviate from the actual priors implemented in BART. Here, we study the exact BART prior and propose a simple modification so that it also enjoys optimality properties. To this end, we dive into the branching processes theory. We obtain tail bounds for the distribution of total progeny under heterogeneous Galton-Watson (GW) processes using their connection to random walks. We conclude with a result stating optimal rate of convergence for BART.

We introduce Spike-and-Slab Deep Learning (SS-DL), a fully Bayesian alternative to dropout for improving generalizability of deep ReLU networks. This new type of regularization enables provable recovery of smooth input-output maps with {\sl unknown} levels of smoothness. Indeed, we show that the posterior distribution concentrates at the near minimax rate for alpha-Holder smooth maps, performing as well as if we knew the smoothness level alpha ahead of time. Our result sheds light on architecture design for deep neural networks, namely the choice of depth, width and sparsity level. These network attributes typically depend on unknown smoothness in order to be optimal. We obviate this constraint with the fully Bayes construction. As an aside, we show that SS-DL does not overfit in the sense that the posterior concentrates on smaller networks with fewer (up to the optimal number of) nodes and links. Our results provide new theoretical justifications for deep ReLU networks from a Bayesian point of view.

Many machine learning tools for regression are based on recursive partitioning of the covariate space into smaller regions, where the regression function can be estimated locally. Among these, regression trees and their ensembles have demonstrated impressive empirical performance. In this work, we shed light on the machinery behind Bayesian variants of these methods. In particular, we study Bayesian regression histograms, such as Bayesian dyadic trees, in the simple regression case with just one predictor. We focus on the reconstruction of regression surfaces that are piecewise constant, where the number of jumps is unknown. We show that with suitably designed priors, posterior distributions concentrate around the true step regression function at a near-minimax rate. These results {\sl do not} require the knowledge of the true number of steps, nor the width of the true partitioning cells. Thus, Bayesian dyadic regression trees are fully adaptive and can recover the true piecewise regression function nearly as well as if we knew the exact number and location of jumps. Our results constitute the first step towards understanding why Bayesian trees and their ensembles have worked so well in practice. As an aside, we discuss prior distributions on balanced interval partitions and how they relate to an old problem in geometric probability. Namely, we relate the probability of covering the circumference of a circle with random arcs whose endpoints are confined to a grid, a new variant of the original problem.

Recent years have seen growing interest in deterministic search approaches to spike-and-slab Bayesian variable selection. Such methods have focused on the goal of finding a global mode to identify a “best model”. However, the report of a single model will be a misleading reflection of the model uncertainty inherent in a highly multimodal posterior. Motivated by non-parametric variational Bayes strategies, we move beyond this limitation by proposing an ensemble optimization approach to identify a collection of representative posterior modes. By deploying determinantal penalty functions as diversity regularizers, our approach performs regularization over multiple locations of the posterior. The key driver of these determinantal penalties is a kernel function that induces repulsion in the latent model space domain.