Neural Empirical Bayes: Source Distribution Estimation and its Applications to Simulation-Based Inference

12 Jul 2021, 15:00
15m
Track E (Zoom)

Track E

Zoom

Computation, Machine Learning, and AI Computation, Machine Learning, and AI

Speaker

Maxime Noel Pierre Vandegar (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (US))

Description

We examine the problem of unfolding in particle physics, or de-corrupting observed distributions to estimate underlying truth distributions, through the lens of Empirical Bayes and deep generative modeling. The resulting method, Neural Empirical Bayes (NEB), can unfold continuous multi-dimensional distributions, in contrast to traditional approaches that treat unfolding as a discrete linear inverse problem. We exclusively apply our method in the absence of a tractable likelihood function, as is typical in scientific domains relying on computer simulations. Moreover, combining NEB with suitable sampling methods allows posterior inference for individual samples, thus enabling the possibility of reconstruction with uncertainty estimation.

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Primary authors

Maxime Noel Pierre Vandegar (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (US)) Dr Michael Aaron Kagan (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (US))

Presentation materials