Predictive Coresets

We propose a construction of coresets based on a predictive view of Bayesian posterior inference (Fong et al., 2024; Fortini and Petrone, 2012). The main attraction of the approach is the model-agnostic nature - the method is valid with any inference model and independent of the specific inference goals, making it highly adaptable for a wide range of applications. Such adaptability is particularly valuable in the context of large-scale datasets, now commonplace in fields like genomics and astronomy. While this explosion of data offers incredible opportunities for discoveries, it also brings significant computational challenges. Tasks that were once straightforward, such as evaluating likelihoods several times have become increasingly difficult, making traditional data processing methods impractical. These obstacles have frequently pushed practitioners toward simpler statistical models that might not capture the full complexity of the data, disregarding expressiveness and flexibility that rich hierarchical and nonparametric models can offer.