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Poster
Lost Relatives of the Gumbel Trick
Matej Balog · Nilesh Tripuraneni · Zoubin Ghahramani · Adrian Weller

Tue Aug 08 01:30 AM -- 05:00 AM (PDT) @ Gallery #117
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The Gumbel trick is a method to sample from a discrete probability distribution, or to estimate its normalizing partition function. The method relies on repeatedly applying a random perturbation to the distribution in a particular way, each time solving for the most likely configuration. We derive an entire family of related methods, of which the Gumbel trick is one member, and show that the new methods have superior properties in several settings with minimal additional computational cost. In particular, for the Gumbel trick to yield computational benefits for discrete graphical models, Gumbel perturbations on all configurations are typically replaced with so-called low-rank perturbations. We show how a subfamily of our new methods adapts to this setting, proving new upper and lower bounds on the log partition function and deriving a family of sequential samplers for the Gibbs distribution. Finally, we balance the discussion by showing how the simpler analytical form of the Gumbel trick enables additional theoretical results.

Author Information

Matej Balog (University of Cambridge)
Nilesh Tripuraneni (UC Berkeley)
Zoubin Ghahramani (University of Cambridge & Uber)

Zoubin Ghahramani is a Professor at the University of Cambridge, and Chief Scientist at Uber. He is also Deputy Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, was a founding Director of the Alan Turing Institute and co-founder of Geometric Intelligence (now Uber AI Labs). His research focuses on probabilistic approaches to machine learning and AI. In 2015 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Adrian Weller (University of Cambridge)
Adrian Weller

Adrian Weller is Programme Director for AI at The Alan Turing Institute, the UK national institute for data science and AI, and is a Turing AI Fellow leading work on trustworthy Machine Learning (ML). He is a Principal Research Fellow in ML at the University of Cambridge, and at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence where he is Programme Director for Trust and Society. His interests span AI, its commercial applications and helping to ensure beneficial outcomes for society. Previously, Adrian held senior roles in finance. He received a PhD in computer science from Columbia University, and an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge.

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