Trust-Region Based Stochastic Variational Inference for Distributed and Asynchronous Networks

Stochastic variational inference is an efficient Bayesian inference technology for massive datasets, which approximates posteriors by using noisy gradient estimates. Traditional stochastic variational inference can only be performed in a centralized manner, which limits its applications in a wide range of situations where data is possessed by multiple nodes. Therefore, this paper develops a novel trust-region based stochastic variational inference algorithm for a general class of conjugate-exponential models over distributed and asynchronous networks, where the global parameters are diffused over the network by using the Metropolis rule and the local parameters are updated by using the trust-region method. Besides, a simple rule is introduced to balance the transmission frequencies between neighboring nodes such that the proposed distributed algorithm can be performed in an asynchronous manner. The utility of the proposed algorithm is tested by fitting the Bernoulli model and the Gaussian model to different datasets on a synthetic network, and experimental results demonstrate its effectiveness and advantages over existing works.