Related papers: Multi-level stochastic approximation algorithms
Variational inference approximates the posterior distribution of a probabilistic model with a parameterized density by maximizing a lower bound for the model evidence. Modern solutions fit a flexible approximation with stochastic gradient…
The pseudo-marginal algorithm is a popular variant of the Metropolis--Hastings scheme which allows us to sample asymptotically from a target probability density $\pi$, when we are only able to estimate an unnormalized version of $\pi$…
The performance of standard stochastic approximation implementations can vary significantly based on the choice of the steplength sequence, and in general, little guidance is provided about good choices. Motivated by this gap, in the first…
Improving efficiency of importance sampler is at the center of research in Monte Carlo methods. While adaptive approach is usually difficult within the Markov Chain Monte Carlo framework, the counterpart in importance sampling can be…
The Stochastic Approximation EM (SAEM) algorithm, a variant stochastic approximation of EM, is a versatile tool for inference in incomplete data models. In this paper, we review the fundamental EM algorithm and then focus especially on the…
A framework previously introduced in [3] for solving a sequence of stochastic optimization problems with bounded changes in the minimizers is extended and applied to machine learning problems such as regression and classification. The…
The EM algorithm is a powerful tool for maximum likelihood estimation with missing data. In practice, the calculations required for the EM algorithm are often intractable. We review numerous methods to circumvent this intractability, all of…
The Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is a popular choice for learning latent variable models. Variants of the EM have been initially introduced, using incremental updates to scale to large datasets, and using Monte Carlo (MC)…
In this paper, a distributed stochastic approximation algorithm is studied. Applications of such algorithms include decentralized estimation, optimization, control or computing. The algorithm consists in two steps: a local step, where each…
Two-time-scale stochastic approximation is a popular iterative method for finding the solution of a system of two equations. Such methods have found broad applications in many areas, especially in machine learning and reinforcement…
We introduce contextual stochastic bilevel optimization (CSBO) -- a stochastic bilevel optimization framework with the lower-level problem minimizing an expectation conditioned on some contextual information and the upper-level decision…
We propose a multilevel Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for the Bayesian inference of random field parameters in PDEs using high-resolution data. Compared to existing multilevel MCMC methods, we additionally consider level-dependent…
We describe an embarrassingly parallel, anytime Monte Carlo method for likelihood-free models. The algorithm starts with the view that the stochasticity of the pseudo-samples generated by the simulator can be controlled externally by a…
We investigate the problem of computing a nested expectation of the form $\mathbb{P}[\mathbb{E}[X|Y] \!\geq\!0]\!=\!\mathbb{E}[\textrm{H}(\mathbb{E}[X|Y])]$ where $\textrm{H}$ is the Heaviside function. This nested expectation appears, for…
In the literatur there exist approximation methods for McKean-Vlasov stochastic differential equations which have a computational effort of order $3$. In this article we introduce full-history recursive multilevel Picard (MLP)…
In this paper we introduce a class of novel distributed algorithms for solving stochastic big-data convex optimization problems over directed graphs. In the addressed set-up, the dimension of the decision variable can be extremely high and…
We aim at analyzing in terms of a.s. convergence and weak rate the performances of the Multilevel Monte Carlo estimator (MLMC) introduced in [Gil08] and of its weighted version, the Multilevel Richardson Romberg estimator (ML2R), introduced…
We introduce a new Monte Carlo method by incorporating a guided distribution function to the conventional Monte Carlo method. In this way, the efficiency of Monte Carlo methods is drastically improved. To further speed up the algorithm, we…
We study multilevel techniques, commonly used in PDE multigrid literature, to solve structured optimization problems. For a given hierarchy of levels, we formulate a coarse model that approximates the problem at each level and provides a…
We present a new method for stochastic shape optimisation of engineering structures. The method generalises an existing deterministic scheme, in which the structure is represented and evolved by a level-set method coupled with mathematical…