Related papers: Small World MCMC with Tempering: Ergodicity and Sp…

A time-dependent finite-state Markov chain that uses doubly stochastic transition matrices, is considered. Entropic quantities that describe the randomness of the probability vectors, and also the randomness of the discrete paths, are…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) samplers are numerical methods for drawing samples from a given target probability distribution. We discuss one particular MCMC sampler, the MALA-within-Gibbs sampler, from the theoretical and practical…

Sampling from learned high-dimensional distributions is a foundational computational problem. We introduce U-turn chains: Markov chains obtained by iterating short forward-backward steps of a diffusion model, in which each step proposes a…

It has become increasingly easy nowadays to collect approximate posterior samples via fast algorithms such as variational Bayes, but concerns exist about the estimation accuracy. It is tempting to build solutions that exploit approximate…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling methods are widely used but often encounter either slow convergence or biased sampling when applied to multimodal high dimensional distributions. In this paper, we present a general framework of…

\emph{Sampling} constitutes an important tool in a variety of areas: from machine learning and combinatorial optimization to computational physics and biology. A central class of sampling algorithms is the \emph{Markov Chain Monte Carlo}…

Multimodal structures in the sampling density (e.g. two competing phases) can be a serious problem for traditional Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), because correct sampling of the different structures can only be guaranteed for infinite…

Markov jump processes (MJPs) are continuous-time stochastic processes widely used in a variety of applied disciplines. Inference for MJPs typically proceeds via Markov chain Monte Carlo, the state-of-the-art being a uniformization-based…

We study convergence properties of pseudo-marginal Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms (Andrieu and Roberts [Ann. Statist. 37 (2009) 697-725]). We find that the asymptotic variance of the pseudo-marginal algorithm is always at least as…

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…

We obtain a perfect sampling characterization of weak ergodicity for backward products of finite stochastic matrices, and equivalently, simultaneous tail triviality of the corresponding nonhomogeneous Markov chains. Applying these ideas to…

Perfect sampling is a technique that uses coupling arguments to provide a sample from the stationary distribution of a Markov chain in a finite time without ever computing the distribution. This technique is very efficient if all the events…

Ergodic exploration has spawned a lot of interest in mobile robotics due to its ability to design time trajectories that match desired spatial coverage statistics. However, current ergodic approaches are for continuous spaces, which require…

The theoretical analysis of many problems in physics, astronomy and applied mathematics requires an efficient numerical exploration of multimodal parameter spaces that exhibit broken ergodicity. Monte Carlo methods are widely used to deal…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are frequently used to approximately simulate high-dimensional, multimodal probability distributions. In adaptive MCMC methods, the transition kernel is changed "on the fly" in the hope to speed up…

Hybrid Gibbs samplers represent a prominent class of approximated Gibbs algorithms that utilize Markov chains to approximate conditional distributions, with the Metropolis-within-Gibbs algorithm standing out as a well-known example. Despite…

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…

Convergence rate analyses of random walk Metropolis-Hastings Markov chains on general state spaces have largely focused on establishing sufficient conditions for geometric ergodicity or on analysis of mixing times. Geometric ergodicity is a…

We present an algorithm for learning mixtures of Markov chains and Markov decision processes (MDPs) from short unlabeled trajectories. Specifically, our method handles mixtures of Markov chains with optional control input by going through a…

This paper provides a new path method that can be used to determine when an ergodic continuous-time Markov chain on $\mathbb Z^d$ converges exponentially fast to its stationary distribution in $L^2$. Specifically, we provide general…