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Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, such as the Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm, are widely used for Bayesian inference. One of the most important issues for any MCMC method is the convergence of the Markov chain, which depends…

Performing exact Bayesian inference for complex models is computationally intractable. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms can provide reliable approximations of the posterior distribution but are expensive for large datasets and…

Fitting models to data to obtain distributions of consistent parameter values is important for uncertainty quantification, model comparison, and prediction. Standard Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approaches for fitting ordinary…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods provide powerful framework for sampling unknown probability measures across a wide range of scientific applications. In some settings, the target distribution is supported on a lower-dimensional…

Model comparison for the purposes of selection, averaging and validation is a problem found throughout statistics. Within the Bayesian paradigm, these problems all require the calculation of the posterior probabilities of models within a…

Probabilistic models are conceptually powerful tools for finding structure in data, but their practical effectiveness is often limited by our ability to perform inference in them. Exact inference is frequently intractable, so approximate…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are indispensable when sampling from a complex, high-dimensional distribution by a conventional method is intractable. Even though MCMC is a powerful tool, it is also hard to control and tune in…

The availability of data sets with large numbers of variables is rapidly increasing. The effective application of Bayesian variable selection methods for regression with these data sets has proved difficult since available Markov chain…

Because of their multimodality, mixture posterior distributions are difficult to sample with standard Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. We propose a strategy to enhance the sampling of MCMC in this context, using a biasing procedure…

Exponential random graphs are used extensively in the sociology literature. This model seeks to incorporate in random graphs the notion of reciprocity, that is, the larger than expected number of triangles and other small subgraphs.…

Markov chains are simple yet powerful mathematical structures to model temporally dependent processes. They generally assume stationary data, i.e., fixed transition probabilities between observations/states. However, live, real-world…

Sampling from posterior distributions using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods can require an exhaustive number of iterations, particularly when the posterior is multi-modal as the MCMC sampler can become trapped in a local mode for a…

Bayesian model selection enables comparison and ranking of conceptual subsurface models described by spatial prior models, according to the support provided by available geophysical data. Deep generative neural networks can efficiently…

Adaptive and interacting Markov Chains Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are a novel class of non-Markovian algorithms aimed at improving the simulation efficiency for complicated target distributions. In this paper, we study a general…

Both resources in the natural environment and concepts in a semantic space are distributed "patchily", with large gaps in between the patches. To describe people's internal and external foraging behavior, various random walk models have…

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…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are used to estimate features of interest of a distribution. The Monte Carlo error in estimation has an asymptotic normal distribution whose multivariate nature has so far been ignored in the MCMC…

Stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SG-MCMC) methods are Bayesian analogs to popular stochastic optimization methods; however, this connection is not well studied. We explore this relationship by applying simulated annealing to an…

To deal with very large datasets a mini-batch version of the Monte Carlo Markov Chain Stochastic Approximation Expectation-Maximization algorithm for general latent variable models is proposed. For exponential models the algorithm is shown…

Practitioners of Bayesian statistics have long depended on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to obtain samples from intractable posterior distributions. Unfortunately, MCMC algorithms are typically serial, and do not scale to the large…