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We provide a general methodology for unbiased estimation for intractable stochastic models. We consider situations where the target distribution can be written as an appropriate limit of distributions, and where conventional approaches…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-12-01 Sergios Agapiou , Gareth O. Roberts , Sebastian J. Vollmer

Doubly intractable models are encountered in a number of fields, e.g. social networks, ecology and epidemiology. Inference for such models requires the evaluation of a likelihood function, whose normalising factor depends on the model…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-08-25 Yu Yang , Matias Quiroz , Robert Kohn , Scott A. Sisson

Performing numerical integration when the integrand itself cannot be evaluated point-wise is a challenging task that arises in statistical analysis, notably in Bayesian inference for models with intractable likelihood functions. Markov…

Computation · Statistics 2020-06-17 Lawrence Middleton , George Deligiannidis , Arnaud Doucet , Pierre E. Jacob

This article surveys computational methods for posterior inference with intractable likelihoods, that is where the likelihood function is unavailable in closed form, or where evaluation of the likelihood is infeasible. We review recent…

Computation · Statistics 2020-04-10 Matthew T. Moores , Anthony N. Pettitt , Kerrie Mengersen

In the following article we provide an exposition of exact computational methods to perform parameter inference from partially observed network models. In particular, we consider the duplication attachment (DA) model which has a likelihood…

Computation · Statistics 2013-06-20 Junshan Wang , Ajay Jasra , Maria De Iorio

Inference for continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) becomes challenging when the process is only observed at discrete time points. The exact likelihood is intractable, and existing methods often struggle even in medium-dimensional…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-07-23 Tao Tang , Lachlan Astfalck , David Dunson

Exponential random graph models are extremely difficult models to handle from a statistical viewpoint, since their normalising constant, which depends on model parameters, is available only in very trivial cases. We show how inference can…

Applications · Statistics 2010-09-30 Alberto Caimo , Nial Friel

Posterior inference with an intractable likelihood is becoming an increasingly common task in scientific domains which rely on sophisticated computer simulations. Typically, these forward models do not admit tractable densities forcing…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-06-29 Joeri Hermans , Volodimir Begy , Gilles Louppe

Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) is a useful class of methods for Bayesian inference when the likelihood function is computationally intractable. In practice, the basic ABC algorithm may be inefficient in the presence of discrepancy…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2015-05-14 Stefano Cabras , Maria Eugenia Castellanos Nueda , Erlis Ruli

Likelihood-free methods, such as approximate Bayesian computation, are powerful tools for practical inference problems with intractable likelihood functions. Markov chain Monte Carlo and sequential Monte Carlo variants of approximate…

Computation · Statistics 2019-02-26 David J. Warne , Ruth E. Baker , Matthew J. Simpson

Bayesian inference for Continuous-Time Markov Chains (CTMCs) on countably infinite spaces is notoriously difficult because evaluating the likelihood exactly is intractable. One way to address this challenge is to first build a non-negative…

Computation · Statistics 2021-05-31 Miguel Biron-Lattes , Alexandre Bouchard-Côté , Trevor Campbell

In recent times empirical likelihood has been widely applied under Bayesian framework. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are frequently employed to sample from the posterior distribution of the parameters of interest. However,…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-09-07 Sanjay Chaudhuri , Teng Yin

In this paper, we present a method for computing the marginal likelihood, also known as the model likelihood or Bayesian evidence, from Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), or other sampled posterior distributions. In order to do this, one…

Models for which the likelihood function can be evaluated only up to a parameter-dependent unknown normalising constant, such as Markov random field models, are used widely in computer science, statistical physics, spatial statistics, and…

Computation · Statistics 2016-02-12 Richard G. Everitt , Adam M. Johansen , Ellen Rowing , Melina Evdemon-Hogan

Bernoulli factory MCMC algorithms implement accept-reject Markov chains without explicit computation of acceptance probabilities, and are used to target posterior distributions associated with intractable likelihood models. Intractable…

Computation · Statistics 2025-07-18 Timothée Stumpf-Fétizon , Flávio B. Gonçalves

This paper introduces a Bayesian framework that combines Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling, dimensionality reduction, and neural density estimation to efficiently handle inverse problems that (i) must be solved multiple times, and…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2026-02-24 Giacomo Bottacini , Matteo Torzoni , Andrea Manzoni

Bayesian learning in undirected graphical models|computing posterior distributions over parameters and predictive quantities is exceptionally difficult. We conjecture that for general undirected models, there are no tractable MCMC (Markov…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-07-19 Iain Murray , Zoubin Ghahramani

In many hierarchical inverse problems, not only do we want to estimate high- or infinite-dimensional model parameters in the parameter-to-observable maps, but we also have to estimate hyperparameters that represent critical assumptions in…

Computation · Statistics 2020-02-18 Johnathan Bardsley , Tiangang Cui

We propose a general framework using spike-and-slab prior distributions to aid with the development of high-dimensional Bayesian inference. Our framework allows inference with a general quasi-likelihood function. We show that highly…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-08-21 Yves Atchade , Anwesha Bhattacharyya

We consider the efficient use of an approximation within Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), with subsequent importance sampling (IS) correction of the Markov chain inexact output, leading to asymptotically exact inference. We detail…

Computation · Statistics 2019-04-15 Jordan Franks