Walk-Sum Interpretation and Analysis of Gaussian Belief Propagation

Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 18 (NIPS 2005)

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Authors

Dmitry Malioutov, Alan Willsky, Jason Johnson

Abstract

This paper presents a new framework based on walks in a graph for analysis and inference in Gaussian graphical models. The key idea is to decompose correlations between variables as a sum over all walks between those variables in the graph. The weight of each walk is given by a product of edgewise partial correlations. We provide a walk-sum interpretation of Gaussian belief propagation in trees and of the approximate method of loopy belief propagation in graphs with cycles. This perspective leads to a better understanding of Gaussian belief propagation and of its convergence in loopy graphs.