Christopher Beckham, PhD
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  • (2024-10-07) paper thoughts -- questionable research practices (QRPs) in machine learning

  • (2024-05-31) EDM diffusion models - a Jupyter implementation, and how they are implemented in practice

    I wrote a self-contained implementation of NVIDIA's EDM diffusion model in a Jupyter notebook, as well as its associated sampling algorithms. I also discuss the rather confusing names used for real-world implementations of those algorithms.

  • (2023-04-27) A deep dive into conditional variational autoencoders

    An excerpt from my PhD thesis. We discuss various difficulties involved in correctly training variational autoencoders, as well as elucidate their behaviour from a theoretical perspective.

  • (2023-04-15) Vicinal distributions as a statistical view on data augmentation

    An excerpt from my PhD thesis. I introduce data augmentation through the lens of vicinal distributions, and introduce mixup augmentation as a multi-sample generalisation of it.

  • (2023-03-20) My notes and derivations for SMLDs

  • (2023-01-27) Techniques for label conditioning in Gaussian denoising diffusion models

    A discussion of three recently-proposed conditional variants for Gaussian diffusion probabilistic models -- classifier-based guidance, classifier-free guidance, and the conditional ELBO (evidence lower bound).

  • (2022-09-24) Learning the conditional prior over classes for image diffusion

    My implementation of a conditional diffusion model for speech enhancement, demonstrated for images on the MNIST dataset. Unlike other conditional formulations which use classifier-style guidance, this proposes a conditional variant of the ELBO.

  • (2022-08-02) The obsession with SOTA needs to stop

  • (2022-07-24) Towards a more sane Mac OS user experience, and I am late to the party

  • (2022-07-11) My notes on discrete denoising diffusion models (D3PMs)

    My notes on D3PMs. It includes derivations for the two main equations presented in their work.

  • (2021-08-17) A somewhat mathematical introduction to Gaussian and Laplace autoencoders

  • (2021-06-28) Training GANs the right way

Christopher Beckham, PhD

  • Christopher Beckham, PhD
  • christopher.beckham(at)mila.quebec
  • christopher-beckham
  • chris_j_beckham

PhD candidate at MILA and Polytechnique Montreal. Interested in self-supervised learning, generative models, few-shot learning, and inverse graphics.