Related papers: Metropolis-Hastings within Partially Collapsed Gib…
MCMC algorithms offer empirically efficient tools for sampling from a target distribution $\pi(x) \propto \exp(-V(x))$. However, on the theory side, MCMC algorithms suffer from slow mixing rate when $\pi(x)$ is non-log-concave. Our work…
We introduce efficient parallel algorithms for sampling from the Gibbs distribution and estimating the partition function of Ising models. These algorithms achieve parallel efficiency, with polylogarithmic depth and polynomial total work,…
Poisson log-linear models are ubiquitous in many applications, and one of the most popular approaches for parametric count regression. In the Bayesian context, however, there are no sufficient specific computational tools for efficient…
In geostatistics, Gaussian random fields are often used to model heterogeneities of soil or subsurface parameters. To give spatial approximations of these random fields, they are discretized. Then, different techniques of geostatistical…
Gibbs sampling is a Markov chain Monte Carlo technique commonly used for estimating marginal distributions. To speed up Gibbs sampling, there has recently been interest in parallelizing it by executing asynchronously. While empirical…
The Multiple-try Metropolis (MTM) method is an interesting extension of the classical Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. However, theoretical understandings of its convergence behavior as well as whether and how it may help are still unknown.…
The maximum a-posteriori (MAP) perturbation framework has emerged as a useful approach for inference and learning in high dimensional complex models. By maximizing a randomly perturbed potential function, MAP perturbations generate unbiased…
Sampling from high dimensional distributions is a computational bottleneck in many scientific applications. Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC), and in particular the No-U-Turn Sampler (NUTS), are widely used, yet they struggle on problems with a…
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…
Monte Carlo approaches have recently been proposed to quantify connectivity in neuronal networks. The key problem is to sample from the conditional distribution of a single neuronal spike train, given the activity of the other neurons in…
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a widely used sampler for continuous probability distributions. In many cases, the underlying Hamiltonian dynamics exhibit a phenomenon of resonance which decreases the efficiency of the algorithm and makes…
In this manuscript, inspired by a simpler reformulation of primary sample space Metropolis light transport, we derive a novel family of general Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms called charted Metropolis-Hastings, that introduces the…
We analyse computational efficiency of Metropolis-Hastings algorithms with AR(1) process proposals. These proposals include, as a subclass, discretized Langevin diffusion (e.g. MALA) and discretized Hamiltonian dynamics (e.g. HMC). By…
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…
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…
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithms which combine numerical approximation of Hamiltonian dynamics on finite intervals with stochastic refreshment and Metropolis correction are popular sampling schemes, but it is known that they may…
We study the benefits and limits of parallelised Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling in cosmology. MCMC methods are widely used for the estimation of cosmological parameters from a given set of observations and are typically based on…
P-splines provide a flexible setting for modeling nonlinear model components based on a discretized penalty structure with a relatively simple computational backbone. Under a Bayesian inferential framework based on Markov chain Monte Carlo,…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are commonly used for their versatility in sampling from complicated probability distributions. However, as the dimension of the distribution gets larger, the computational costs for a satisfactory…
Markov-chain Monte Carlo sampling has become a standard technique for exploring the posterior distribution of cosmological parameters constrained by observations of CMB anisotropies. Given an infinite amount of time, any MCMC sampler will…