Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: We highlight a striking difference in behavior between two widely used variants of coordinate ascent variational inference: the sequential and parallel algorithms. While such differences were known in the numerical analysis literature in simpler settings, they remain largely unexplored in the optimization-focused literature on variational inference in more complex models. Focusing on the moderately high-dimensional linear regression problem, we show that the sequential algorithm, although typically slower, enjoys convergence guarantees under more relaxed conditions than the parallel variant, which is often employed to facilitate block-wise updates and improve computational efficiency.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Author: Pati, Debdeep
Institution: University of Wisconsin–Madison
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7140209387