Multilevel Variational Inference

Multilevel variational inference (MLVI) is a scalable approximate Bayesian method that fits hierarchical (multilevel) models by optimizing a variational approximation to the posterior, rather than drawing MCMC samples. It exploits the grouped structure of multilevel data — individuals nested within groups, groups nested within higher-level units — to derive efficient coordinate-wise updates, making Bayesian inference tractable for large clustered datasets.