Title: Efficient and principled score estimation with Nyström kernel exponential families,
Abstract: We propose a fast method with statistical guarantees for learning an
exponential family density model where the natural parameter is in a
reproducing kernel Hilbert space, and may be infinite-dimensional. The model is
learned by fitting the derivative of the log density, the score, thus avoiding
the need to compute a normalization constant. Our approach improves the
computational efficiency of an earlier solution by using a low-rank,
Nyström-like solution. The new solution retains the consistency and
convergence rates of the full-rank solution (exactly in Fisher distance, and
nearly in other distances), with guarantees on the degree of cost and storage
reduction. We evaluate the method in experiments on density estimation and in
the construction of an adaptive Hamiltonian Monte Carlo sampler. Compared to an
existing score learning approach using a denoising autoencoder, our estimator
is empirically more data-efficient when estimating the score, runs faster, and
has fewer parameters (which can be tuned in a principled and interpretable
way), in addition to providing statistical guarantees.