Related papers: Adaptive Equi-Energy Sampler : Convergence and Ill…

In a recent paper `The equi-energy sampler with applications statistical inference and statistical mechanics' [Ann. Stat. 34 (2006) 1581--1619], Kou, Zhou & Wong have presented a new stochastic simulation method called the equi-energy (EE)…

We develop an Evolutionary Markov Chain Monte Carlo (EMCMC) algorithm for sampling spatial partitions that lie within a large and complex spatial state space. Our algorithm combines the advantages of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) as…

We congratulate Samuel Kou, Qing Zhou and Wing Wong [math.ST/0507080] (referred to subsequently as KZW) for this beautifully written paper, which opens a new direction in Monte Carlo computation. This discussion has two parts. First, we…

Due to the intractable partition function, training energy-based models (EBMs) by maximum likelihood requires Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling to approximate the gradient of the Kullback-Leibler divergence between data and model…

The Equi-Energy Sampler (EES) introduced by Kou et al [2006] is based on a population of chains which are updated by local moves and global moves, also called equi-energy jumps. The state space is partitioned into energy rings, and the…

Modern problems in astronomical Bayesian inference require efficient methods for sampling from complex, high-dimensional, often multi-modal probability distributions. Most popular methods, such as Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling, perform…

We introduce a new sampling algorithm, the equi-energy sampler, for efficient statistical sampling and estimation. Complementary to the widely used temperature-domain methods, the equi-energy sampler, utilizing the temperature--energy…

Adaptive Markov chains are an important class of Monte Carlo methods for sampling from probability distributions. The time evolution of adaptive algorithms depends on past samples, and thus these algorithms are non-Markovian. Although there…

We introduce a stable, well tested Python implementation of the affine-invariant ensemble sampler for Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) proposed by Goodman & Weare (2010). The code is open source and has already been used in several published…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods sample from unnormalized probability distributions and offer guarantees of exact sampling. However, in the continuous case, unfavorable geometry of the target distribution can greatly limit the…

Many problems in the physical sciences, machine learning, and statistical inference necessitate sampling from a high-dimensional, multi-modal probability distribution. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, the ubiquitous tool for this…

We introduce the energy-stepping Monte Carlo (ESMC) method, a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm based on the conventional dynamical interpretation of the proposal stage but employing an energy-stepping integrator. The…

Adaptive and interacting Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms (MCMC) have been recently introduced in the literature. These novel simulation algorithms are designed to increase the simulation efficiency to sample complex distributions.…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are widely used in machine learning. One of the major problems with MCMC is the question of how to design chains that mix fast over the whole state space; in particular, how to select the parameters…

Bayesian inference for factorial hidden Markov models is challenging due to the exponentially sized latent variable space. Standard Monte Carlo samplers can have difficulties effectively exploring the posterior landscape and are often…

I introduce a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) scheme in which sampling from a distribution with density pi(x) is done using updates operating on an "ensemble" of states. The current state x is first stochastically mapped to an ensemble,…

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…

This paper studies the mixing time of certain adaptive Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms. Under some regularity conditions, we show that the convergence rate of Importance Resampling MCMC (IRMCMC) algorithm, measured in terms of the total…

Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are a powerful and commonly used family of numerical methods for sampling from complex probability distributions. As applications of these methods increase in size and complexity, the need for efficient…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) excels at sampling complex posteriors but traditionally lags behind nested sampling in accurate evidence estimation, which is crucial for model comparison in astrophysical problems. We introduce reddemcee, an…