Scaling MPE Inference for Constrained Continuous Markov Random Fields with Consensus Optimization

Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 25 (NIPS 2012)

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Authors

Stephen Bach, Matthias Broecheler, Lise Getoor, Dianne O'leary

Abstract

Probabilistic graphical models are powerful tools for analyzing constrained, continuous domains. However, finding most-probable explanations (MPEs) in these models can be computationally expensive. In this paper, we improve the scalability of MPE inference in a class of graphical models with piecewise-linear and piecewise-quadratic dependencies and linear constraints over continuous domains. We derive algorithms based on a consensus-optimization framework and demonstrate their superior performance over state of the art. We show empirically that in a large-scale voter-preference modeling problem our algorithms scale linearly in the number of dependencies and constraints.