论文标题
通过粒子梯度流量进行批次贝叶斯优化
Batch Bayesian Optimization via Particle Gradient Flows
论文作者
论文摘要
贝叶斯优化(BO)方法试图找到目标功能的全球最佳功能,这些功能仅作为黑盒或昂贵的评估。这样的方法为目标函数构建了替代模型,从而量化了通过贝叶斯推论的替代物中的不确定性。通过在每个步骤中最大化采集函数来依次确定客观评估。但是,由于采集函数的非转换性,尤其是在批处理贝叶斯优化的情况下,该辅助优化问题可能是高度不平凡的,因此可以解决。在这项工作中,我们将批处理重新制定为在概率措施空间上的优化问题。我们基于多点预期改进来构建一个新的采集函数,该功能是概率度量空间的凸面。解决此“内部”优化问题的实用方案自然会作为该目标功能的梯度流。我们证明了这种新方法对不同基准函数的功效,并与最先进的批次BO方法进行了比较。
Bayesian Optimisation (BO) methods seek to find global optima of objective functions which are only available as a black-box or are expensive to evaluate. Such methods construct a surrogate model for the objective function, quantifying the uncertainty in that surrogate through Bayesian inference. Objective evaluations are sequentially determined by maximising an acquisition function at each step. However, this ancilliary optimisation problem can be highly non-trivial to solve, due to the non-convexity of the acquisition function, particularly in the case of batch Bayesian optimisation, where multiple points are selected in every step. In this work we reformulate batch BO as an optimisation problem over the space of probability measures. We construct a new acquisition function based on multipoint expected improvement which is convex over the space of probability measures. Practical schemes for solving this `inner' optimisation problem arise naturally as gradient flows of this objective function. We demonstrate the efficacy of this new method on different benchmark functions and compare with state-of-the-art batch BO methods.