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Bayesian parameter estimation typically trains an emulator to reproduce the objective function using a limited number of design point (order 10 per dimension).
by tictacttoe 7y ago
Bayesian parameter estimation typically trains an emulator to reproduce the objective function using a limited number of design point (order 10 per dimension). Once the emulator is trained, you could of course use a multi dimensional minimization function of your choice to find the best fit point.
However, constructing and sampling the Bayesian posterior using MCMC methods has several advantages. Sometimes you can have a local minimum which is essentially flat, so the optimal hyperparameter is unstable. You'll see this in the posterior distribution. Or you could have two parameters which are correlated so it's their sum that's constrained not their individual values. All this information provides important context when understanding your model's uncertainty.
- improbable22 7y agoThanks. Do I understand right that the Bayesian gaussian-process things people do here use only the fully trained loss as input, i.e. just one number L(W), being minimised over W? As opposed to something more detailed about the model, viewed as generating probabilities perhaps, or having training history. Big nearly-flat areas aren't really a new feature of hyperparameter problems... I guess the exact choice of algorithm would depend on how common they are, and maybe Nelder-Mead would be a poor choice. (And I'm not sure how easy it is to parallelise.)