大规模对比56种优化器,找出无需调参的变分推断最佳组合。
Large-scale empirical tuning and comparison of default optimizers for variational inference

- 在1092个问题上测试56种自适应优化算法,覆盖多种难度和维度。
- 仅用5种算法组合即可接近最优性能,无需专家调参。
- 为无调参场景和新算法评估提供可靠基准,适合实际应用者参考。
黑箱变分推断(BBVI)依赖随机优化进行后验近似,但传统优化器常需大量人工调参,削弱其“黑箱”优势。近年来,众多自适应优化算法被提出,可减少甚至消除调参需求。本文对这类方法在BBVI中的表现进行了大规模实证评估:在1092个贝叶斯推断优化问题上,测试了56种基于随机梯度的优化算法,完成超过55万次独立优化运行,耗时约15个核心年。问题涵盖后验维度1至10⁴、条件数1至10⁸,以及多种变分族。结果表明,无单一算法全面领先,但选取5种算法组合即可稳定逼近最佳表现。该研究为无法进行专家调参的应用提供了强基准,并可用于新优化算法的比较。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Black-box variational inference (BBVI) is a methodology for posterior approximation that relies on stochastic optimization. In practice, the stochastic optimizers underpinning BBVI generally require extensive problem-specific tuning, which undermines its promise as a truly "black box" inference algorithm. However, over the past decade, many new adaptive stochastic optimization algorithms have been developed that reduce or remove entirely the need for tuning. In this work, we investigate this new collection of adaptive methods in the context of BBVI, with the goal of establishing the current state of the art in tuning-free optimization-based inference. In particular, we present a large-scale empirical evaluation of 56 stochastic gradient-based optimization algorithms applied to 1092 Bayesian inference optimization problems, involving over 550,000 individual optimization runs and 15 core-years of compute. The optimization algorithms we evaluate are chosen to represent a wide spectrum of recent approaches and the benchmark problems are chosen to span a range of difficulty, with posterior target dimension 1-10^4, condition number 1-10^8, and a range of variational families. Our results show that no single method dominates, but running a selection of 5 algorithms suffices to reliably get close to the best-possible observed performance. We thus provide a strong baseline for applications where expert tuning is not possible and for comparison when developing new stochastic optimization algorithms.
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