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Modern Bayesian Experimental Design

Bayesian experimental design (BED) provides a powerful and general framework for optimizing the design of experiments. However, its deployment often poses substantial computational challenges that can undermine its practical use. In this review, we …

CO-BED: Information-Theoretic Contextual Optimization via Bayesian Experimental Design

We formalize the problem of contextual optimization through the lens of Bayesian experimental design and propose CO-BED -- a general, model-agnostic framework for designing contextual experiments using information-theoretic principles. After …

Differentiable Multi-Target Causal Bayesian Experimental Design

We introduce a gradient-based approach for the problem of Bayesian optimal experimental design to learn causal models in a batch setting -- a critical component for causal discovery from finite data where interventions can be costly or risky. …

Leveraging Self-Consistency for Data-Efficient Amortized Bayesian Inference

We propose a method to improve the efficiency and accuracy of amortized Bayesian inference by leveraging universal symmetries in the joint probabilistic model of parameters and data. In a nutshell, we invert Bayes' theorem and estimate the marginal …

Step-DAD: Semi-Amortized Policy-Based Bayesian Experimental Design

We develop a semi-amortized, policy-based, approach to Bayesian experimental design (BED) called Step-wise Deep Adaptive Design (Step-DAD). Like existing, fully amortized, policy-based BED approaches, Step-DAD trains a design policy upfront before …

Efficient Real-world Testing of Causal Decision Making via Bayesian Experimental Design for Contextual Optimisation

Our method is used for the data-efficient evaluation of the regret of past treatment assignments. Unlike approaches such as A/B testing, our method avoids assigning treatments that are known to be highly sub-optimal, whilst engaging in some exploration to gather pertinent information. We achieve this by introducing an information-based design objective, which we optimise end-to-end.

Implicit Deep Adaptive Design: Policy–Based Experimental Design without Likelihoods

iDAD allows us to practically run Bayesian optimal experiments with implicit (likelihood-free) models in real-time. Previous methods either relied on an explicit likelihood model of the outcomes, or were too computationally costly to run in real-time.

Deep Adaptive Design: Amortizing Sequential Bayesian Experimental Design

DAD is the first policy-based approach to BOED that enables adaptive experiments to be performed in real-time.