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Knot selection in sparse Gaussian processes with a variational objective function
Author(s) -
Garton Nathaniel,
Niemi Jarad,
Carriquiry Alicia
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
statistical analysis and data mining: the asa data science journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.381
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1932-1872
pISSN - 1932-1864
DOI - 10.1002/sam.11459
Subject(s) - knot (papermaking) , gaussian , benchmark (surveying) , mathematical optimization , bayesian optimization , mathematics , algorithm , computer science , selection (genetic algorithm) , artificial intelligence , physics , geography , geodesy , quantum mechanics , chemical engineering , engineering
Sparse, knot‐based Gaussian processes have enjoyed considerable success as scalable approximations of full Gaussian processes. Certain sparse models can be derived through specific variational approximations to the true posterior, and knots can be selected to minimize the Kullback‐Leibler divergence between the approximate and true posterior. While this has been a successful approach, simultaneous optimization of knots can be slow due to the number of parameters being optimized. Furthermore, there have been few proposed methods for selecting the number of knots, and no experimental results exist in the literature. We propose using a one‐at‐a‐time knot selection algorithm based on Bayesian optimization to select the number and locations of knots. We showcase the competitive performance of this method relative to optimization of knots simultaneously on three benchmark datasets, but at a fraction of the computational cost.