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Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is widely regarded as one of the most important algorithms of the 20th century. Its guarantees of asymptotic convergence, stability, and estimator-variance bounds using only unnormalized probability functions…
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…
Probabilistic graphical models, such as Markov random fields (MRF), exploit dependencies among random variables to model a rich family of joint probability distributions. Sophisticated inference algorithms, such as belief propagation (BP),…
Many kinds of data can be represented as a network or graph. It is crucial to infer the latent structure underlying such a network and to predict unobserved links in the network. Mixed Membership Stochastic Blockmodel (MMSB) is a promising…
We introduce and demonstrate a new approach to inference in expressive probabilistic programming languages based on particle Markov chain Monte Carlo. Our approach is simple to implement and easy to parallelize. It applies to…
Factors models are routinely used to analyze high-dimensional data in both single-study and multi-study settings. Bayesian inference for such models relies on Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods which scale poorly as the number of…
In lattice quantum field theory studies, parameters defining the lattice theory must be tuned toward criticality to access continuum physics. Commonly used Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods suffer from critical slowing down in this…
Gibbs sampling is one of the most commonly used Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms due to its simplicity and efficiency. It cycles through the latent variables, sampling each one from its distribution conditional on the current…
Doubly intractable distributions arise in many settings, for example in Markov models for point processes and exponential random graph models for networks. Bayesian inference for these models is challenging because they involve intractable…
Due to the escalating growth of big data sets in recent years, new Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) parallel computing methods have been developed. These methods partition large data sets by observations into subsets. However, for…
Markov chain Monte Carlo is an inherently serial algorithm. Although likelihood calculations for individual steps can sometimes be parallelized, the serial evolution of the process is widely viewed as incompatible with parallelization,…
We introduce a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm to generate samples from probability distributions supported on a $d$-dimensional lattice $\Lambda = \mathbf{B}\mathbb{Z}^d$, where $\mathbf{B}$ is a full-rank matrix. Specifically,…
We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) in which the transition probabilities and rewards belong to an uncertainty set parametrized by a collection of random variables. The probability distributions for these random parameters are…
For large matrix factorisation problems, we develop a distributed Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method based on stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (SGLD) that we call Parallel SGLD (PSGLD). PSGLD has very favourable scaling properties…
It is common practice in Markov chain Monte Carlo to update the simulation one variable (or sub-block of variables) at a time, rather than conduct a single full-dimensional update. When it is possible to draw from each full-conditional…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are standard approaches to solve imaging inverse problems and quantify estimation uncertainties, a key requirement in absence of ground-truth data. To improve estimation quality, Plug-and-Play MCMC…
Understanding decisions made by neural networks is key for the deployment of intelligent systems in real world applications. However, the opaque decision making process of these systems is a disadvantage where interpretability is essential.…
The Metropolis algorithm is a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm used to simulate from parameter distributions of interest, such as generalized linear model parameters. The "Metropolis step" is a keystone concept that underlies…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling is an important and commonly used tool for the analysis of hierarchical models. Nevertheless, practitioners generally have two options for MCMC: utilize existing software that generates a black-box…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are foundational algorithms for Bayesian inference and probabilistic modeling. However, most MCMC algorithms are inherently sequential and their time complexity scales linearly with the sequence…