Hierarchical Bayesian networks and neural networks with stochastic hidden
units are commonly perceived as two separate types of models. We show that
either of these types of models can often be transformed into an instance of
the other, by switching between centered and differentiable non-centered
parameterizations of the latent variables. The choice of parameterization
greatly influences the efficiency of gradient-based posterior inference; we
show that they are often complementary to eachother, we clarify when each
parameterization is preferred and show how inference can be made robust. In the
non-centered form, a simple Monte Carlo estimator of the marginal likelihood
can be used for learning the parameters. Theoretical results are supported by
experiments.

本论文研究了层次贝叶斯网络和具有随机隐藏单元的神经网络，表明通过在潜在变量的中心化和可微非中心化参数化之间切换，这两种类型的模型可以相互转换，并且给出了各种参数化的优缺点及推断方法。在非中心形式中，可以使用简单的蒙特卡洛估计器来学习参数。理论结果得到了实验证实。