Publications | Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

ei pn Hauberg, S., Schober, M., Liptrot, M., Hennig, P., Feragen, A. A Random Riemannian Metric for Probabilistic Shortest-Path Tractography In 18th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, 9349, pages: 597-604, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, MICCAI, 2015 (inproceedings)

Probabilistic numerics and uncertainty in computations

Hennig, P., Osborne, M. A., Girolami, M.

Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 471(2179), 2015 (article)

Abstract

We deliver a call to arms for probabilistic numerical methods: algorithms for numerical tasks, including linear algebra, integration, optimization and solving differential equations, that return uncertainties in their calculations. Such uncertainties, arising from the loss of precision induced by numerical calculation with limited time or hardware, are important for much contemporary science and industry. Within applications such as climate science and astrophysics, the need to make decisions on the basis of computations with large and complex data have led to a renewed focus on the management of numerical uncertainty. We describe how several seminal classic numerical methods can be interpreted naturally as probabilistic inference. We then show that the probabilistic view suggests new algorithms that can flexibly be adapted to suit application specifics, while delivering improved empirical performance. We provide concrete illustrations of the benefits of probabilistic numeric algorithms on real scientific problems from astrometry and astronomical imaging, while highlighting open problems with these new algorithms. Finally, we describe how probabilistic numerical methods provide a coherent framework for identifying the uncertainty in calculations performed with a combination of numerical algorithms (e.g. both numerical optimizers and differential equation solvers), potentially allowing the diagnosis (and control) of error sources in computations.

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ei pn Hennig, P., Osborne, M. A., Girolami, M. Probabilistic numerics and uncertainty in computations Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 471(2179), 2015 (article)

pdf Youtube Supplements Project page link (url) [BibTex]

2014

Probabilistic Progress Bars

Kiefel, M., Schuler, C., Hennig, P.

In Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR), 8753, pages: 331-341, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: Jiang, X., Hornegger, J., and Koch, R.), Springer, GCPR, September 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Predicting the time at which the integral over a stochastic process reaches a target level is a value of interest in many applications. Often, such computations have to be made at low cost, in real time. As an intuitive example that captures many features of this problem class, we choose progress bars, a ubiquitous element of computer user interfaces. These predictors are usually based on simple point estimators, with no error modelling. This leads to fluctuating behaviour confusing to the user. It also does not provide a distribution prediction (risk values), which are crucial for many other application areas. We construct and empirically evaluate a fast, constant cost algorithm using a Gauss-Markov process model which provides more information to the user.

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website+code pdf DOI [BibTex]

2014

ei ps pn Kiefel, M., Schuler, C., Hennig, P. Probabilistic Progress Bars In Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR), 8753, pages: 331-341, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Editors: Jiang, X., Hornegger, J., and Koch, R.), Springer, GCPR, September 2014 (inproceedings)

website+code pdf DOI [BibTex]

Probabilistic Solutions to Differential Equations and their Application to Riemannian Statistics

Hennig, P., Hauberg, S.

In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, 33, pages: 347-355, JMLR: Workshop and Conference Proceedings, (Editors: S Kaski and J Corander), Microtome Publishing, Brookline, MA, AISTATS, April 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

We study a probabilistic numerical method for the solution of both boundary and initial value problems that returns a joint Gaussian process posterior over the solution. Such methods have concrete value in the statistics on Riemannian manifolds, where non-analytic ordinary differential equations are involved in virtually all computations. The probabilistic formulation permits marginalising the uncertainty of the numerical solution such that statistics are less sensitive to inaccuracies. This leads to new Riemannian algorithms for mean value computations and principal geodesic analysis. Marginalisation also means results can be less precise than point estimates, enabling a noticeable speed-up over the state of the art. Our approach is an argument for a wider point that uncertainty caused by numerical calculations should be tracked throughout the pipeline of machine learning algorithms.

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ei ps pn Hennig, P., Hauberg, S. Probabilistic Solutions to Differential Equations and their Application to Riemannian Statistics In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, 33, pages: 347-355, JMLR: Workshop and Conference Proceedings, (Editors: S Kaski and J Corander), Microtome Publishing, Brookline, MA, AISTATS, April 2014 (inproceedings)

pdf Youtube Supplements Project page link (url) [BibTex]

Local Gaussian Regression

Meier, F., Hennig, P., Schaal, S.

arXiv preprint, March 2014, clmc (misc)

Abstract

Abstract: Locally weighted regression was created as a nonparametric learning method that is computationally efficient, can learn from very large amounts of data and add data incrementally. An interesting feature of locally weighted regression is that it can work with ...

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am pn Meier, F., Hennig, P., Schaal, S. Local Gaussian Regression arXiv preprint, March 2014, clmc (misc)

Probabilistic ODE Solvers with Runge-Kutta Means

Schober, M., Duvenaud, D., Hennig, P.

In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 27, pages: 739-747, (Editors: Z. Ghahramani, M. Welling, C. Cortes, N.D. Lawrence and K.Q. Weinberger), Curran Associates, Inc., 28th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2014 (inproceedings)

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ei pn Schober, M., Duvenaud, D., Hennig, P. Probabilistic ODE Solvers with Runge-Kutta Means In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 27, pages: 739-747, (Editors: Z. Ghahramani, M. Welling, C. Cortes, N.D. Lawrence and K.Q. Weinberger), Curran Associates, Inc., 28th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2014 (inproceedings)

Active Learning of Linear Embeddings for Gaussian Processes

Garnett, R., Osborne, M., Hennig, P.

In Proceedings of the 30th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, pages: 230-239, (Editors: NL Zhang and J Tian), AUAI Press , Corvallis, Oregon, UAI2014, 2014, another link: http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.6740 (inproceedings)

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ei pn Garnett, R., Osborne, M., Hennig, P. Active Learning of Linear Embeddings for Gaussian Processes In Proceedings of the 30th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, pages: 230-239, (Editors: NL Zhang and J Tian), AUAI Press , Corvallis, Oregon, UAI2014, 2014, another link: http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.6740 (inproceedings)

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Probabilistic Shortest Path Tractography in DTI Using Gaussian Process ODE Solvers

Schober, M., Kasenburg, N., Feragen, A., Hennig, P., Hauberg, S.

In Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention – MICCAI 2014, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 8675, pages: 265-272, (Editors: P. Golland, N. Hata, C. Barillot, J. Hornegger and R. Howe), Springer, Heidelberg, MICCAI, 2014 (inproceedings)

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DOI [BibTex]

ei pn Schober, M., Kasenburg, N., Feragen, A., Hennig, P., Hauberg, S. Probabilistic Shortest Path Tractography in DTI Using Gaussian Process ODE Solvers In Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention – MICCAI 2014, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 8675, pages: 265-272, (Editors: P. Golland, N. Hata, C. Barillot, J. Hornegger and R. Howe), Springer, Heidelberg, MICCAI, 2014 (inproceedings)

DOI [BibTex]

Sampling for Inference in Probabilistic Models with Fast Bayesian Quadrature

Gunter, T., Osborne, M., Garnett, R., Hennig, P., Roberts, S.

In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 27, pages: 2789-2797, (Editors: Z. Ghahramani, M. Welling, C. Cortes, N.D. Lawrence and K.Q. Weinberger), Curran Associates, Inc., 28th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2014 (inproceedings)

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ei pn Gunter, T., Osborne, M., Garnett, R., Hennig, P., Roberts, S. Sampling for Inference in Probabilistic Models with Fast Bayesian Quadrature In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 27, pages: 2789-2797, (Editors: Z. Ghahramani, M. Welling, C. Cortes, N.D. Lawrence and K.Q. Weinberger), Curran Associates, Inc., 28th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2014 (inproceedings)

Incremental Local Gaussian Regression

Meier, F., Hennig, P., Schaal, S.

In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 27, pages: 972-980, (Editors: Z. Ghahramani, M. Welling, C. Cortes, N.D. Lawrence and K.Q. Weinberger), 28th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2014, clmc (inproceedings)

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PDF link (url) [BibTex]

am ei pn Meier, F., Hennig, P., Schaal, S. Incremental Local Gaussian Regression In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 27, pages: 972-980, (Editors: Z. Ghahramani, M. Welling, C. Cortes, N.D. Lawrence and K.Q. Weinberger), 28th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2014, clmc (inproceedings)

PDF link (url) [BibTex]

Efficient Bayesian Local Model Learning for Control

Meier, F., Hennig, P., Schaal, S.

In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pages: 2244 - 2249, IROS, 2014, clmc (inproceedings)

Abstract

Model-based control is essential for compliant controland force control in many modern complex robots, like humanoidor disaster robots. Due to many unknown and hard tomodel nonlinearities, analytical models of such robots are oftenonly very rough approximations. However, modern optimizationcontrollers frequently depend on reasonably accurate models,and degrade greatly in robustness and performance if modelerrors are too large. For a long time, machine learning hasbeen expected to provide automatic empirical model synthesis,yet so far, research has only generated feasibility studies butno learning algorithms that run reliably on complex robots.In this paper, we combine two promising worlds of regressiontechniques to generate a more powerful regression learningsystem. On the one hand, locally weighted regression techniquesare computationally efficient, but hard to tune due to avariety of data dependent meta-parameters. On the other hand,Bayesian regression has rather automatic and robust methods toset learning parameters, but becomes quickly computationallyinfeasible for big and high-dimensional data sets. By reducingthe complexity of Bayesian regression in the spirit of local modellearning through variational approximations, we arrive at anovel algorithm that is computationally efficient and easy toinitialize for robust learning. Evaluations on several datasetsdemonstrate very good learning performance and the potentialfor a general regression learning tool for robotics.

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PDF link (url) DOI [BibTex]

am ei pn Meier, F., Hennig, P., Schaal, S. Efficient Bayesian Local Model Learning for Control In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pages: 2244 - 2249, IROS, 2014, clmc (inproceedings)

PDF link (url) DOI [BibTex]

2013

Camera-specific Image Denoising

Schober, M.

Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, October 2013 (diplomathesis)

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2013

ei pn Schober, M. Camera-specific Image Denoising Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, October 2013 (diplomathesis)

website+code pdf link (url) [BibTex]

Quasi-Newton Methods: A New Direction

Hennig, P., Kiefel, M.

Journal of Machine Learning Research, 14(1):843-865, March 2013 (article)

Abstract

Four decades after their invention, quasi-Newton methods are still state of the art in unconstrained numerical optimization. Although not usually interpreted thus, these are learning algorithms that fit a local quadratic approximation to the objective function. We show that many, including the most popular, quasi-Newton methods can be interpreted as approximations of Bayesian linear regression under varying prior assumptions. This new notion elucidates some shortcomings of classical algorithms, and lights the way to a novel nonparametric quasi-Newton method, which is able to make more efficient use of available information at computational cost similar to its predecessors.

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ei ps pn Hennig, P., Kiefel, M. Quasi-Newton Methods: A New Direction Journal of Machine Learning Research, 14(1):843-865, March 2013 (article)

website+code pdf link (url) [BibTex]

The Randomized Dependence Coefficient

Lopez-Paz, D., Hennig, P., Schölkopf, B.

In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 26, pages: 1-9, (Editors: C.J.C. Burges, L. Bottou, M. Welling, Z. Ghahramani, and K.Q. Weinberger), 27th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2013 (inproceedings)

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ei pn Lopez-Paz, D., Hennig, P., Schölkopf, B. The Randomized Dependence Coefficient In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 26, pages: 1-9, (Editors: C.J.C. Burges, L. Bottou, M. Welling, Z. Ghahramani, and K.Q. Weinberger), 27th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2013 (inproceedings)

Fast Probabilistic Optimization from Noisy Gradients

Hennig, P.

In Proceedings of The 30th International Conference on Machine Learning, JMLR W&CP 28(1), pages: 62–70, (Editors: S Dasgupta and D McAllester), ICML, 2013 (inproceedings)

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ei pn Hennig, P. Fast Probabilistic Optimization from Noisy Gradients In Proceedings of The 30th International Conference on Machine Learning, JMLR W&CP 28(1), pages: 62–70, (Editors: S Dasgupta and D McAllester), ICML, 2013 (inproceedings)

Nonparametric dynamics estimation for time periodic systems

Klenske, E., Zeilinger, M., Schölkopf, B., Hennig, P.

In Proceedings of the 51st Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, pages: 486-493 , 2013 (inproceedings)

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ei pn Klenske, E., Zeilinger, M., Schölkopf, B., Hennig, P. Nonparametric dynamics estimation for time periodic systems In Proceedings of the 51st Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, pages: 486-493 , 2013 (inproceedings)

Lopez-Paz, D., Hennig, P., Schölkopf, B.

The Randomized Dependence Coefficient

Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2013 (poster)

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ei pn Lopez-Paz, D., Hennig, P., Schölkopf, B. The Randomized Dependence Coefficient Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2013 (poster)

Analytical probabilistic modeling for radiation therapy treatment planning

Bangert, M., Hennig, P., Oelfke, U.

Physics in Medicine and Biology, 58(16):5401-5419, 2013 (article)

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ei pn Bangert, M., Hennig, P., Oelfke, U. Analytical probabilistic modeling for radiation therapy treatment planning Physics in Medicine and Biology, 58(16):5401-5419, 2013 (article)

Analytical probabilistic proton dose calculation and range uncertainties

Bangert, M., Hennig, P., Oelfke, U.

In 17th International Conference on the Use of Computers in Radiation Therapy, pages: 6-11, (Editors: A. Haworth and T. Kron), ICCR, 2013 (inproceedings)

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[BibTex]

ei pn Bangert, M., Hennig, P., Oelfke, U. Analytical probabilistic proton dose calculation and range uncertainties In 17th International Conference on the Use of Computers in Radiation Therapy, pages: 6-11, (Editors: A. Haworth and T. Kron), ICCR, 2013 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

Animating Samples from Gaussian Distributions

Hennig, P.

(8), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany, 2013 (techreport)

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ei pn Hennig, P. Animating Samples from Gaussian Distributions (8), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany, 2013 (techreport)