Empirical Inference

Approximations for Binary Gaussian Process Classification

2008

Article

ei


We provide a comprehensive overview of many recent algorithms for approximate inference in Gaussian process models for probabilistic binary classification. The relationships between several approaches are elucidated theoretically, and the properties of the different algorithms are corroborated by experimental results. We examine both 1) the quality of the predictive distributions and 2) the suitability of the different marginal likelihood approximations for model selection (selecting hyperparameters) and compare to a gold standard based on MCMC. Interestingly, some methods produce good predictive distributions although their marginal likelihood approximations are poor. Strong conclusions are drawn about the methods: The Expectation Propagation algorithm is almost always the method of choice unless the computational budget is very tight. We also extend existing methods in various ways, and provide unifying code implementing all approaches.

Author(s): Nickisch, H. and Rasmussen, CE.
Journal: Journal of Machine Learning Research
Volume: 9
Pages: 2035-2078
Year: 2008
Month: October
Day: 0

Department(s): Empirical Inference
Bibtex Type: Article (article)

Digital: 0
Language: en
Organization: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
School: Biologische Kybernetik

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BibTex

@article{5305,
  title = {Approximations for Binary Gaussian Process Classification},
  author = {Nickisch, H. and Rasmussen, CE.},
  journal = {Journal of Machine Learning Research},
  volume = {9},
  pages = {2035-2078},
  organization = {Max-Planck-Gesellschaft},
  school = {Biologische Kybernetik},
  month = oct,
  year = {2008},
  doi = {},
  month_numeric = {10}
}