
ML for Scientists: L13
Carol(ina) Cuesta-Lazaro
This week in AI4Science
https://rikiyat.github.io/blog/weight-space-programming/

Why should I care?
Decision making
Decision making in science
Is the current Standard Model ruled out by data?
Mass density
Vacuum Energy Density
CMB
Supernovae

Observation
Ground truth
Prediction
Uncertainty
Is it safe to drive there?
Interpretable Simulators

Uncertainties are everywhere

Noise in features
+ correlations
Noise in finite data realization
Uncertain parameters
Limited model architecture
Imperfect optimization

Ensembling / Bayesian NNs
Forward Model
Observable
Dark matter
Dark energy
Inflation
Predict
Infer

Parameters
Inverse mapping

Fault line stress
Plate velocity

Likelihood
Posterior
Prior
Evidence
Markov Chain Monte Carlo MCMC
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo HMC
Variational Inference VI
If can evaluate posterior (up to normalization), but not sample
Intractable
Unknown likelihoods
Amortized inference
Scaling high-dimensional
Marginalization nuisance

["Polychord: nested sampling for cosmology" Handley et al]
["Fluctuation without dissipation: Microcanonical Langevin Monte Carlo" Robnik and Seljak]

The price of sampling
Higher Effective Sample Size (ESS) = less correlated samples
Number of Simulator Calls
Known likelihood
Differentiable simulators
The simulator samples the likelihood





z: All possible trajectories

Maximize the likelihood of the training samples
Model
Training Samples
Neural Likelihood Estimation NLE






NLE
No implicit prior
Not amortized
Goodness-of-fit
Scaling with dimensionality of x
Implicit marginalization
Neural Posterior Estimation NPE
Loss Approximate variational posterior, q, to true posterior, p

Image Credit: "Bayesian inference; How we are able to chase the Posterior" Ritchie Vink
KL Divergence
Need samples from true posterior
Run simulator
Minimize KL
Amortized Inference!
Run simulator
Neural Posterior Estimation NPE
Neural Compression


High-Dimensional
Low-Dimensional
s is sufficient iif
Neural Compression: MI
Maximise
Mutual Information
Need true posterior!
NLE
No implicit prior
Not amortized
Goodness-of-fit
Scaling with dimensionality of x
NPE
Amortized
Scales well to high dimensional x
Goodness-of-fit?
Robustness?
Fixed prior
Implicit marginalization
Implicit marginalization
Do we actually need Density Estimation?
Just use binary classifiers!

Binary cross-entropy
Sample from simulator
Mix-up
Likelihood-to-evidence ratio
Likelihood-to-evidence ratio
NLE
No implicit prior
Not amortized
Goodness-of-fit
Scaling with dimensionality of x
NPE
NRE
Amortized
Scales well to high dimensional x
Implicit marginalization
No need variational distribution
No implicit prior
Implicit marginalization
Approximately normalised
Not amortized
Implicit marginalization
Goodness-of-fit?
Robustness?
Fixed prior










How good is your posterior?
Test log likelihood
["Benchmarking simulation-based inference"
Lueckmann et al
arXiv:2101.04653]
Posterior predictive checks

Observed
Re-simulated posterior samples
Classifier 2 Sample Test (C2ST)



Real or Fake?
Benchmarking SBI
["Benchmarking simulation-based inference"
Lueckmann et al
arXiv:2101.04653]

Classifier 2 Sample Test (C2ST)
["A Trust Crisis In Simulation-Based Inference? Your Posterior Approximations Can Be Unfaithful" Hermans et al
arXiv:2110.06581]

Much better than overconfident!
Coverage: assessing uncertainties
["A Trust Crisis In Simulation-Based Inference? Your Posterior Approximations Can Be Unfaithful" Hermans et al
arXiv:2110.06581]
Credible region (CR)
Not unique
High Posterior Density region (HPD)
Smallest "volume"

True value in CR with
probability

Empirical Coverage Probability (ECP)

["Investigating the Impact of Model Misspecification in Neural Simulation-based Inference" Cannon et al arXiv:2209.01845 ]
Underconfident
Overconfident
Calibrated doesn't mean informative!
Always look at information gain too
["A Trust Crisis In Simulation-Based Inference? Your Posterior Approximations Can Be Unfaithful" Hermans et al
arXiv:2110.06581]

["Calibrating Neural Simulation-Based Inference with Differentiable Coverage Probability" Falkiewicz et al
arXiv:2310.13402]
["A Trust Crisis In Simulation-Based Inference? Your Posterior Approximations Can Be Unfaithful" Hermans et al
arXiv:2110.06581]
Model mispecification

["Investigating the Impact of Model Misspecification in Neural Simulation-based Inference" Cannon et al arXiv:2209.01845]
More misspecified

Sequential SBI

["Benchmarking simulation-based inference"
Lueckmann et al
arXiv:2101.04653]

[Image credit: https://www.mackelab.org/delfi/]Sequential SBI
Real life scaling: Gravitational lensing
["A Strong Gravitational Lens Is Worth a Thousand Dark Matter Halos: Inference on Small-Scale Structure Using Sequential Methods" Wagner-Carena et al arXiv:2404.14487]


Money plot - Nov 18th -> Discuss in class Nov 19th

Transformer from scratch - Nov 4th
Nov 5th discuss in class

ML For Scientists: L13
By carol cuesta
ML For Scientists: L13
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