Related papers: Markov Chain Monte Carlo using Tree-Based Priors o…
Probability estimation is one of the fundamental tasks in statistics and machine learning. However, standard methods for probability estimation on discrete objects do not handle object structure in a satisfactory manner. In this paper, we…
In this paper, we build and explore supervised learning models of ferromagnetic system behavior, using Monte-Carlo sampling of the spin configuration space generated by the 2D Ising model. Given the enormous size of the space of all…
In this paper we address the problem of learning the structure of a Bayesian network in domains with continuous variables. This task requires a procedure for comparing different candidate structures. In the Bayesian framework, this is done…
The posterior probability distribution for a set of model parameters encodes all that the data have to tell us in the context of a given model; it is the fundamental quantity for Bayesian parameter estimation. In order to infer the…
This paper presents a Markov chain Monte Carlo method to generate approximate posterior samples in retrospective multiple changepoint problems where the number of changes is not known in advance. The method uses conjugate models whereby the…
We present a Metropolis-Hastings Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm for detecting hidden variables in a continuous time Bayesian network (CTBN), which uses reversible jumps in the sense defined by (Green 1995). In common with several…
Bayesian inference in the presence of an intractable likelihood function is computationally challenging. When following a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach to approximate the posterior distribution in this context, one typically…
Estimating model parameters of a general family of cure models is always a challenging task mainly due to flatness and multimodality of the likelihood function. In this work, we propose a fully Bayesian approach in order to overcome these…
We present a two-stage Metropolis-Hastings algorithm for sampling probabilistic models, whose log-likelihood is computationally expensive to evaluate, by using a surrogate Gaussian Process (GP) model. The key feature of the approach, and…
Algorithms for exact and approximate inference in stochastic logic programs (SLPs) are presented, based respectively, on variable elimination and importance sampling. We then show how SLPs can be used to represent prior distributions for…
In many application areas, data are collected on a categorical response and high-dimensional categorical predictors, with the goals being to build a parsimonious model for classification while doing inferences on the important predictors.…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms ubiquitously employ complex deterministic transformations to generate proposal points that are then filtered by the Metropolis-Hastings-Green (MHG) test. However, the condition of the target…
An informal observation, made by several authors, is that the adaptive design of a Markov transition kernel has the flavour of a reinforcement learning task. Yet, to-date it has remained unclear how to actually exploit modern reinforcement…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have become a cornerstone of many modern scientific analyses by providing a straightforward approach to numerically estimate uncertainties in the parameters of a model using a sequence of random…
Network growth processes can be understood as generative models of the structure and history of complex networks. This point of view naturally leads to the problem of network archaeology: reconstructing all the past states of a network from…
In this work, we develop an objective Bayesian framework for the Dhillon probability distribution. We explicitly derive three objective priors: the Jeffreys prior, the overall reference prior, and the maximal data information prior. We show…
We propose an adaptive Metropolis-Hastings algorithm in which sampled data are used to update the proposal distribution. We use the samples found by the algorithm at a particular step to form the information-theoretically optimal mean-field…
High-dimensional feature selection arises in many areas of modern science. For example, in genomic research we want to find the genes that can be used to separate tissues of different classes (e.g. cancer and normal) from tens of thousands…
We investigate the use of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm to sample posterior distribution in a Bayesian inverse problem, where the likelihood function is random. Concretely, we consider the case where one has full field observations of a…
This work is motivated by the analysis of ecological interaction networks. Poisson stochastic blockmodels are widely used in this field to decipher the structure that underlies a weighted network, while accounting for covariate effects.…