New Inference for a Multiclass Gaussian Process Classification Model using a Variational Bayesian EM Algorithm and Laplace Approximation

In this study, we propose a new inference algorithm for a multiclass Gaussian process classification model using a variational EM framework and the Laplace approximation (LA) technique. This is performed in two steps, called expectation and maximization. First, in the expectation step (E-step), using Bayes' theorem and the LA technique, we derive the approximate posterior distribution of the latent function, indicating the possibility that each observation belongs to a certain class in the Gaussian process classification model. In the maximization step, we compute the maximum likelihood estimators for hyper-parameters of a covariance matrix necessary to define the prior distribution of the latent function by using the posterior distribution derived in the E-step. These steps iteratively repeat until a convergence condition is satisfied. Moreover, we conducted the experiments by using synthetic data and Iris data in order to verify the performance of the proposed algorithm. Experimental results reveal that the proposed algorithm shows good performance on these datasets.