论文标题
贝叶斯结构学习与生成流网络
Bayesian Structure Learning with Generative Flow Networks
论文作者
论文摘要
在贝叶斯结构学习中,我们有兴趣从数据中推断出贝叶斯网络的定向无环图(DAG)结构。由于组合较大的样本空间,定义这种分布非常具有挑战性,并且通常需要基于MCMC的近似值。最近,已经引入了一种新型的概率模型,称为生成流网络(GFLOWNETS),作为离散和复合对象(例如图形)生成建模的一般框架。在这项工作中,我们建议使用GFLOWNET作为MCMC的替代方案,以近似贝叶斯网络结构上的后验分布,给定观测数据集。从该近似分布中生成样本DAG被视为一个顺序决策问题,在该概率基于学习的过渡概率的情况下,该图一次是一个边缘。通过对模拟和真实数据的评估,我们表明我们的方法称为DAG-GFLOWNET,提供了与DAG相比的后验的准确近似,并且它可以与基于MCMC或变异推断的其他方法进行比较。
In Bayesian structure learning, we are interested in inferring a distribution over the directed acyclic graph (DAG) structure of Bayesian networks, from data. Defining such a distribution is very challenging, due to the combinatorially large sample space, and approximations based on MCMC are often required. Recently, a novel class of probabilistic models, called Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets), have been introduced as a general framework for generative modeling of discrete and composite objects, such as graphs. In this work, we propose to use a GFlowNet as an alternative to MCMC for approximating the posterior distribution over the structure of Bayesian networks, given a dataset of observations. Generating a sample DAG from this approximate distribution is viewed as a sequential decision problem, where the graph is constructed one edge at a time, based on learned transition probabilities. Through evaluation on both simulated and real data, we show that our approach, called DAG-GFlowNet, provides an accurate approximation of the posterior over DAGs, and it compares favorably against other methods based on MCMC or variational inference.