Pages

Monday, January 16, 2023

UQSay #53

The fifty-third UQSay seminar on UQ, DACE and related topics will take place online on Thursday afternoon, January 19, 2023.

2–3 PM — Felipe Tobar (Initiative for Data & AI, Univ. de Chile) — [slides]


Computationally-efficient initialisation of Gaussian processes: The generalised variogram method

We present a computationally-efficient strategy to find the hyperparameters of a Gaussian process (GP) avoiding the computation of the likelihood function. Motivated by the fact that training a GP via ML is equivalent (on average) to minimising the KL-divergence between the true and learnt model, we set to explore different metrics/divergences among GPs that are computationally inexpensive and provide estimates close to those of ML. In particular, we identify the GP hyperparameters by projecting the empirical covariance or (Fourier) power spectrum onto a parametric family, thus proposing and studying various measures of discrepancy operating on the temporal or frequency domains. Our contribution extends the Variogram method developed by the geostatistics literature and, accordingly, it is referred to as the Generalised Variogram method (GVM). In this talk, we will start with a brief introduction to Gaussian processes, then present the proposed GVM and finally provide experimental validation using synthetic and real-world data.

Joint work with Elsa Cazelles & Taco de Wolff.

Ref: arXiv:2210.05394.

Organizing committee: Pierre Barbillon (MIA-Paris), Julien Bect (L2S), Nicolas Bousquet (EDF R&D), Amélie Fau (LMPS), Filippo Gatti (LMPS), Bertrand Iooss (EDF R&D), Alexandre Janon (LMO), Sidonie Lefebvre (ONERA), Didier Lucor (LISN), Emmanuel Vazquez (L2S).

Coordinators: Julien Bect (L2S) & Sidonie Lefebvre (ONERA)

Practical details: the seminar will be held online using Microsoft Teams.

If you want to attend this seminar (or any of the forthcoming online UQSay seminars), and if you do not already have access to the UQSay group on Teams, simply send an email and you will be invited. Please specify which email address the invitation must be sent to (this has to be the address associated with your Teams account).

You will find the link to the seminar on the "General" UQSay channel on Teams, approximately 15 minutes before the beginning.

The technical side of things: you can use Teams either directly from your web browser or using the "fat client", which is available for most platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac, Android & iOS). We strongly recommend the latter option whenever possible. Please give it a try before the seminar to anticipate potential problems.