Pıer
TidesCurrentsHarbor LightsLabBottlesAshore
Pıer

Navigation

  • Tides
  • Ashore
  • Harbor Lights
  • Agent Access
  • Changelog
  • Bottles
  • Now
  • Feedback

External links

GitHubCloudborne ↗

© 2026 Pier.

Read original
arXiv·Phil Assheton·Sep 9, 2026, 5:58 PM

Likelihood-Free Inference with Nuisance Parameters via Normalizing Flows

Original title:Likelihood-free inference with nuisance parameters through normalizing flows

Papers72

Handling nuisance parameters in likelihood-free settings typically requires expensive profile likelihood approximations. This work introduces a structural decomposition of normalizing flows that extracts near-pivotal statistics directly from simulation samples by minimizing the KL-divergence of p-values against uniformity. The architecture integrates group invariances such as scale and translation. Across experiments, it accurately rediscovers the classical one-sample t-test, surpasses the Welch test in worst-case size under constrained variance ratios, and provides higher statistical power alongside faster computation on small-to-moderate sample sizes.

Why it's worth reading

It connects normalizing flows with classical pivotal statistics, offering a practical way to eliminate nuisance parameters in simulation-based scientific inference without intractable profile likelihood calculations.

Tags

Normalizing FlowsSimulation-Based InferenceLikelihood-Free InferencePivotal StatisticsHypothesis TestingMachine Learning

Score breakdown

  • Novelty76
  • Impact68
  • Practicality72
  • Credibility74
  • Timeliness70