2016 AISTATS AISTATS 2016

Scalable MCMC for Mixed Membership Stochastic Blockmodels

Abstract

We propose a stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SG-MCMC) algorithm for scalable inference in mixed-membership stochastic blockmodels (MMSB). Our algorithm is based on the stochastic gradient Riemannian Langevin sampler and achieves both faster speed and higher accuracy at every iteration than the current state-of-the-art algorithm based on stochastic variational inference. In addition we develop an approximation that can handle models that entertain a very large number of communities. The experimental results show that SG-MCMC strictly dominates competing algorithms in all cases.

🌉 Interdisciplinary Bridge — Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
🧭 Keyword Pioneer — riemannian langevin sampler
🐣 Hot Topic Early Bird — markov chain monte carlo
🐝 Cross-Pollinator — Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Computer Vision, Data Science & Analytics, Deep Learning, Healthcare & Medicine, Interdisciplinary, Knowledge & Reasoning, Machine Learning, Mathematics & Optimization, Natural Language Processing, Reinforcement Learning