Related papers: Component-Wise Markov Chain Monte Carlo: Uniform a…
The need to calibrate increasingly complex statistical models requires a persistent effort for further advances on available, computationally intensive Monte Carlo methods. We study here an advanced version of familiar Markov Chain Monte…
Among random sampling methods, Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms are foremost. Using a combination of analytical and numerical approaches, we study their convergence properties towards the steady state, within a random walk Metropolis…
For spatial and network data, we consider models formed from a Markov random field (MRF) structure and the specification of a conditional distribution for each observation. Fast simulation from such MRF models is often an important…
The parameters of a discrete stationary Markov model are transition probabilities between states. Traditionally, data consist in sequences of observed states for a given number of individuals over the whole observation period. In such a…
Evaluating the degree of partisan districting (Gerrymandering) in a statistical framework typically requires an ensemble of districting plans which are drawn from a prescribed probability distribution that adheres to a realistic and…
We propose Adaptive Incremental Mixture Markov chain Monte Carlo (AIMM), a novel approach to sample from challenging probability distributions defined on a general state-space. While adaptive MCMC methods usually update a parametric…
This paper deals with a complete bipartite matching problem with the objective of finding an optimal matching that maximizes a certain generic predefined utility function on the set of all matchings. After proving the NP-hardness of the…
The Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm is a widely recognised as an efficient method for sampling a specified posterior distribution. However, when the posterior is multi-modal, conventional MCMC algorithms either tend to become…
Bayesian mixture models are widely applied for unsupervised learning and exploratory data analysis. Markov chain Monte Carlo based on Gibbs sampling and split-merge moves are widely used for inference in these models. However, both methods…
We elaborate the idea behind Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods in a mathematically coherent, yet simple and understandable way. To this end, we proof a pivotal convergence theorem for finite Markov chains and a minimal version of the…
Tasks such as record linkage and multi-target tracking, which involve reconstructing the set of objects that underlie some observed data, are particularly challenging for probabilistic inference. Recent work has achieved efficient and…
Parallel Markov Chain Monte Carlo (pMCMC) algorithms generate clouds of proposals at each step to efficiently resolve a target probability distribution. We build a rigorous foundational framework for pMCMC algorithms that situates these…
Sampling from Gibbs distribution is a central problem in computer science as well as in statistical physics. In this work we focus on the k-colouring model} and the hard-core model with fugacity \lambda when the underlying graph is an…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms have become powerful tools for Bayesian inference. However, they do not scale well to large-data problems. Divide-and-conquer strategies, which split the data into batches and, for each batch, run…
Sampling from the lattice Gaussian distribution plays an important role in various research fields. In this paper, the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)-based sampling technique is advanced in several fronts. Firstly, the spectral gap for the…
There is a lack of methodological results to design efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms for statistical models with discrete-valued high-dimensional parameters. Motivated by this consideration, we propose a simple framework…
I show how Markov chain sampling with the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm can be modified so as to take bigger steps when the distribution being sampled from has the characteristic that its density can be quickly recomputed for a new point if…
Single-site Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a variant of MCMC in which a single coordinate in the state space is modified in each step. Structured relational models are a good candidate for this style of inference. In the single-site…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) provides a feasible method for inferring Hidden Markov models, however, it is often computationally prohibitive, especially constrained by the curse of dimensionality, as the Monte Carlo sampler traverses…
The problem of optimally scaling the proposal distribution in a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm is critical to the quality of the generated samples. Much work has gone into obtaining such results for various Metropolis-Hastings (MH)…