Papers › Maximum Likelihood Learning of Unnormalized Models for Simulation-Based Inference
Maximum Likelihood Learning of Unnormalized Models for Simulation-Based Inference
Pierre Glaser, Michael Arbel, Samo Hromadka, Arnaud Doucet, Arthur Gretton
We introduce two synthetic likelihood methods for Simulation-Based Inference (SBI), to conduct either amortized or targeted inference from experimental observations when a high-fidelity simulator is available. Both methods learn a conditional energy-based model (EBM) of the likelihood using synthetic data generated by the simulator, conditioned on parameters drawn from a proposal distribution. The learned likelihood can then be combined with any prior to obtain a posterior estimate, from which samples can be drawn using MCMC. Our methods uniquely combine a flexible Energy-Based Model and the minimization of a KL loss: this is in contrast to other synthetic likelihood methods, which either rely on normalizing flows, or minimize score-based objectives; choices that come with known pitfalls. We demonstrate the properties of both methods on a range of synthetic datasets, and apply them to a neuroscience model of the pyloric network in the crab, where our method outperforms prior art for a fraction of the simulation budget.
In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections