Technical Benchmark: BIDSim vs. Variational Inference

This technical benchmark evaluates the BIDSim (Chained Virtual Urns Simulator) against Varia- tional Inference (VI / ADVI), specically Mean-Field and Full-Rank Automatic Dierentiation Varia- tional Inference. While VI reformulates Bayesian integration into an optimization problem by minimizing the reverse Kullback-Leibler divergence DKL(q ∥ p), it suers from severe variance underestimation (under-dispersion), stochastic gradient noise, and softmax Jacobian boundary distortions. BID- Sim provides a 100% exact, glass-box, non-parametric alternative operating on discrete barycentric virtual urns (Popu = 1, 000).

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Published
2026-11-10
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24105707
Primary Topic
Markov Chains and Monte Carlo Methods
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Technical Benchmark: BIDSim vs. Variational Inference

Bernard Pargamin
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Markov Chains and Monte Carlo Methods
article

Technical Benchmark: BIDSim vs. Variational Inference

Bernard Pargamin
article en

Abstract

This technical benchmark evaluates the BIDSim (Chained Virtual Urns Simulator) against Varia- tional Inference (VI / ADVI), specically Mean-Field and Full-Rank Automatic Dierentiation Varia- tional Inference. While VI reformulates Bayesian integration into an optimization problem by minimizing the reverse Kullback-Leibler divergence DKL(q ∥ p), it suers from severe variance underestimation (under-dispersion), stochastic gradient noise, and softmax Jacobian boundary distortions. BID- Sim provides a 100% exact, glass-box, non-parametric alternative operating on discrete barycentric virtual urns (Popu = 1, 000).

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Markov Chains and Monte Carlo Methods
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