Related papers: General-Purpose MCMC Inference over Relational Str…
Accept-reject based Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are the workhorse algorithm for Bayesian inference. These algorithms, like Metropolis-Hastings, require choosing a proposal distribution which is typically informed by the desired…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are commonly used for their versatility in sampling from complicated probability distributions. However, as the dimension of the distribution gets larger, the computational costs for a satisfactory…
This paper introduces a framework for speeding up Bayesian inference conducted in presence of large datasets. We design a Markov chain whose transition kernel uses an (unknown) fraction of (fixed size) of the available data that is randomly…
We propose new Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms to sample probability distributions on submanifolds, which generalize previous methods by allowing the use of set-valued maps in the proposal step of the MCMC algorithms. The motivation for…
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…
Performing Bayesian inference via Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) can be exceedingly expensive when posterior evaluations invoke the evaluation of a computationally expensive model, such as a system of partial differential equations. In…
Global fits of physics models require efficient methods for exploring high-dimensional and/or multimodal posterior functions. We introduce a novel method for accelerating Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling by pairing a…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are sampling methods that have become a commonly used tool in statistics, for example to perform Monte Carlo integration. As a consequence of the increase in computational power, many variations of…
We show that for any multiple-try Metropolis algorithm, one can always accept the proposal and evaluate the importance weight that is needed to correct for the bias without extra computational cost. This results in a general, convenient,…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are routinely used to draw samples from distributions with intractable normalization constants. However, standard MCMC algorithms do not apply to doubly-intractable distributions in which there are…
Many applications in signal processing require the estimation of some parameters of interest given a set of observed data. More specifically, Bayesian inference needs the computation of {\it a-posteriori} estimators which are often…
In this paper we consider fully Bayesian inference in general state space models. Existing particle Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms use an augmented model that takes into account all the variable sampled in a sequential Monte…
Probabilistic databases play a crucial role in the management and understanding of uncertain data. However, incorporating probabilities into the semantics of incomplete databases has posed many challenges, forcing systems to sacrifice…
Variable selection is a key issue when analyzing high-dimensional data. The explosion of data with large sample sizes and dimensionality brings new challenges to this problem in both inference accuracy and computational complexity. To…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to sample from a probability distribution $\pi$ defined on a space $(\Theta,\mathcal{T})$ consist of the simulation of realisations of Markov chains $\{\theta_{n},n\geq1\}$ of invariant distribution…
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…
To conduct Bayesian inference with large data sets, it is often convenient or necessary to distribute the data across multiple machines. We consider a likelihood function expressed as a product of terms, each associated with a subset of the…
In parameter estimation problems one computes a posterior distribution over uncertain parameters defined jointly by a prior distribution, a model, and noisy data. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is often used for the numerical solution of…
We propose a new class of learning algorithms that combines variational approximation and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation. Naive algorithms that use the variational approximation as proposal distribution can perform poorly…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are a powerful tool for computation with complex probability distributions. However the performance of such methods is critically dependant on properly tuned parameters, most of which are difficult if…