Bayes’ rule from minimum relative entropy, and an alternative derivation of variational inference

In Bayesian inference our goal is to compute the posterior distribution \begin{aligned} Posterior(\theta) & =\frac{P(x^{*},\theta)}{\int P(x^{*},\theta)d\theta}\end{aligned} where $$P(x,\theta)$$ is the joint distribution, and $$x=x^{*}$$ is the observed value of $$x$$, see the previous post about Bayes’ rule. The trouble with this is the integral in the denominator, which is too difficult to compute for most models. Variational inference is one approach to compute an approximate posterior by solving an optimisation problem instead of an integral. Instead of computing $$Posterior(\theta)$$ exactly, we choose an easy family of distributions $$D\subset\mathbb{D}$$, which is a subset of all distributions $$\mathbb{D}$$ on $$\theta$$, and then pick $$Q\in D$$ that minimises the relative entropy to the true posterior: \begin{aligned} \min_{Q\in D} & D(Q||Posterior)\end{aligned} If we minimise over all distributions $$\mathbb{D}$$, then this will give us $$Q=Posterior$$, but if we minimise only over a subset of all distributions $$D\subset\mathbb{D}$$, then we’ll only get an approximation. So how does this help? Don’t we need to compute the true $$Posterior$$ anyway, in order to even set up this minimisation problem? It turns out that we don’t. We can rewrite the relative entropy as follows: \begin{aligned} D(Q||Posterior) & =\mathbb{E}_{\theta\sim Q}[\log\frac{Q(\theta)}{Posterior(\theta)}]\\ & =\mathbb{E}_{\theta\sim Q}[\log\frac{Q(\theta)}{P(x^{*},\theta)}]+\log\int P(x^{*},\theta)d\theta\end{aligned} The difficult integral pops out of the logarithm as an additive constant, so for the sake of the minimisation problem it doesn’t matter: \begin{aligned} \min_{Q\in D} & D(Q||Posterior)=\min_{Q\in D}\mathbb{E}_{\theta\sim Q}[\log\frac{Q(\theta)}{P(x^{*},\theta)}]\end{aligned} The right hand side is called the ELBO, the evidence lower bound. You may ask how this problem is any easier, because the expectation is still a difficult integral. In general it is still difficult, but it becomes easy if we choose our family of distributions $$D$$ right. Usually the model we’re talking about has a vector of parameters $$\theta=(\theta_{1},\dots,\theta_{n})$$, and we choose a distribution $$Q(\theta)=Q_{1}(\theta_{1})\cdots Q_{n}(\theta_{n})$$ that factorises, and usually $$P(x^{*},\theta)$$ comes from a graphical model, so it factorises as well. The $$\log$$ turns this into a sum of terms, and for each of those terms it’s (hopefully) easy to compute the expectation in closed form. We can then solve the minimisation problem using gradient descent, or a similar algorithm.

## Bayes’ rule from minimum relative entropy

Instead of finding $$Q$$ as an approximation to the posterior, we’re instead going to show that the posterior itself already is a solution to a miminisation problem. The problem is this: we have the model $$P(x,\theta)$$ and ask ourselves what’s the distribution $$Q(x,\theta)$$ closest to $$P(x,\theta)$$, where $$Q$$ is any distribution that puts all probability mass on $$x=x^{*}$$? If we interpret “closest” as “with minimum relative entropy”, then $$Q$$ is precisely the Bayesian posterior. Let me show you. The $$Q$$ we’re trying to find is \begin{aligned} \min_{Q\in D_{x^{*}}} & D(Q||P)\end{aligned} where $$D_{x^{*}}$$ is the set of distributions that put all probability mass of $$Q(x,\theta)$$ on $$x=x^{*}$$. In other words, $$Q(x,\theta)=\delta(x-x^{*})Q(\theta)$$ where $$\delta$$ is the Dirac delta measure. Since $$D(Q||P)=\mathbb{E}_{x,\theta\sim Q}[\log\frac{Q(x,\theta)}{P(x,\theta)}]=\mathbb{E}_{\theta\sim Q}[\log\frac{Q(\theta)}{P(x^{*},\theta)}]$$, we have indeed \begin{aligned} Posterior & =argmin_{Q\in\mathbb{D}}\mathbb{E}_{\theta\sim Q}[\log\frac{Q(\theta)}{P(x^{*},\theta)}]\end{aligned} We have derived Bayes’ rule from the principle of minimum relative entropy. Note that the term on the right hand side is precisely the ELBO of the previous section.

## An alternative derivation of variational inference

By turning the true posterior into a minimisation problem, we have an alternative motivation for variational inference. Instead of minimising over all distributions to get the true posterior, minmise over an easy family to get an approximation to the posterior. This sounds similar to the previous motivation, but it’s subtly different. In the first motivation we used Bayes’ rule to get the true posterior, and then used relative entropy to look for a distribution $$Q$$ that approximates the posterior, and then derived the ELBO by ignoring an additive constant. In the second motivation we derived the ELBO directly, by using relative entropy to obtain an expression for the true posterior as a minimisation problem. In summary, Bayesian inference answers the question:

• What’s the distribution $$Q(x,\theta)$$ closest to $$P(x,\theta)$$, where $$Q\in\mathbb{D}$$ is a distribution that puts all probability mass on $$x=x^{*}$$?

Whereas variational inference is the following approximation:

• What’s the distribution $$Q(x,\theta)$$ closest to $$P(x,\theta)$$, where $$Q\in D$$ is a distribution that puts all probability mass on $$x=x^{*}$$?

For exact Bayesian inference we optimise over the set of all distributions $$\mathbb{D}$$, whereas for variational inference we only optimise over some easy family $$D\subset\mathbb{D}$$.

## Maximum a posteriori inference

As a bonus, consider what happens if for our family $$D$$ we pick the set of distributions $$Q_{\theta}\in D$$ that put all probability mass on a single point $$\theta$$. The expectation $$\mathbb{E}_{Q_{\theta}}[\log\frac{Q_{\theta}(\theta)}{P(x^{*},\theta)}]=\log\frac{Q_{\theta}(\theta)}{P(x^{*},\theta)}$$ becomes a single term in that case. The numerator is constant $$Q_{\theta}(\theta)=1$$ because all probability mass is on that $$\theta$$ (let’s assume $$\theta$$ is discrete for the sake of argument), so we’re left with \begin{aligned} \min_{\theta}\log\frac{1}{P(x^{*},\theta)} & =\max_{\theta}\log P(x^{*},\theta)\end{aligned} This is MAP inference, so MAP inference is Bayesian variational inference with a particular easy family of distributions.