A slice sampler for restricted hierarchical beta process with applications to shared subspace learning

Hierarchical beta process has found interesting applications in recent years. In this paper we present a modified hierarchical beta process prior with applications to hierarchical modeling of multiple data sources. The novel use of the prior over a hierarchical factor model allows factors to be shared across different sources. We derive a slice sampler for this model, enabling tractable inference even when the likelihood and the prior over parameters are non-conjugate. This allows the application of the model in much wider contexts without restrictions. We present two different data generative models - a linear Gaussian- Gaussian model for real valued data and a linear Poisson-gamma model for count data. Encouraging transfer learning results are shown for two real world applications - text modeling and content based image retrieval.