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Related papers: Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for Hierarchical Models

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Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) and its dynamic extensions, such as the No-U-Turn Sampler (NUTS), are powerful Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for sampling from complex, high-dimensional probability distributions. Riemannian manifold…

Computation · Statistics 2026-04-16 Miika Kailas , Matti Vihola , Jonas Wallin

Leveraging the coherent exploration of Hamiltonian flow, Hamiltonian Monte Carlo produces computationally efficient Monte Carlo estimators, even with respect to complex and high-dimensional target distributions. When confronted with…

Methodology · Statistics 2015-02-06 M. J. Betancourt

For big data analysis, high computational cost for Bayesian methods often limits their applications in practice. In recent years, there have been many attempts to improve computational efficiency of Bayesian inference. Here we propose an…

Computation · Statistics 2017-04-19 Cheng Zhang , Babak Shahbaba , Hongkai Zhao

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) exploits Hamiltonian dynamics to construct efficient proposals for Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). In this paper, we present a generalization of HMC which exploits \textit{non-canonical} Hamiltonian dynamics.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-08-22 Nilesh Tripuraneni , Mark Rowland , Zoubin Ghahramani , Richard Turner

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is an invaluable means of inference with complicated models, and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, in particular Riemannian Manifold Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (RMHMC), has demonstrated impressive success in many…

Methodology · Statistics 2015-03-02 M. J. Betancourt

In recent years, the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm has been found to work more efficiently compared to other popular Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods (such as random walk Metropolis-Hastings) in generating samples from a…

Computation · Statistics 2014-02-18 Andrew L. Beam , Sujit K. Ghosh , Jon Doyle

Although histogram methods have been extremely effective for analyzing data from Monte Carlo simulations, they do have certain limitations, including the range over which they are valid and the difficulties of combining data from…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-06-25 Robert H. Swendsen , Jian-Sheng Wang , Shing-Te Li , Brian Diggs , Christopher Genovese , Joseph B. Kadane

By leveraging the natural geometry of a smooth probabilistic system, Hamiltonian Monte Carlo yields computationally efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo estimation. At least provided that the algorithm is sufficiently well-tuned. In this…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-01-05 Michael Betancourt

We present a new Subset Simulation approach using Hamiltonian neural network-based Monte Carlo sampling for reliability analysis. The proposed strategy combines the superior sampling of the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo method with…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-01-11 Denny Thaler , Somayajulu L. N. Dhulipala , Franz Bamer , Bernd Markert , Michael D. Shields

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a state of the art method for sampling from distributions with differentiable densities, but can converge slowly when applied to challenging multimodal problems. Running HMC with a time varying Hamiltonian,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-26 Reuben Cohn-Gordon , Uroš Seljak , Dries Sels

For statistical analysis of multiway contingency tables we propose modeling interaction terms in each maximal compact component of a hierarchical model. By this approach we can search for parsimonious models with smaller degrees of freedom…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2011-08-23 Hisayuki Hara , Tomonari Sei , Akimichi Takemura

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is an efficient and effective means of sampling posterior distributions on Euclidean space, which has been extended to manifolds with boundary. However, some applications require an extension to more general…

Populations and Evolution · Quantitative Biology 2017-06-26 Vu Dinh , Arman Bilge , Cheng Zhang , Frederick A. Matsen

When properly tuned, Hamiltonian Monte Carlo scales to some of the most challenging high-dimensional problems at the frontiers of applied statistics, but when that tuning is suboptimal the performance leaves much to be desired. In this…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-04-05 Michael Betancourt

The Hamiltonian Monte Carlo method generates samples by introducing a mechanical system that explores the target density. For distributions on manifolds it is not always simple to perform the mechanics as a result of the lack of global…

Computation · Statistics 2019-04-22 Alessandro Barp , Anthony Kennedy , Mark Girolami

We propose a hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) technique applicable to high-dimensional multivariate normal distributions that effectively samples along chaotic trajectories. The method is predicated on the freedom of choice of the HMC momentum…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2016-04-26 Nirag Kadakia

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo has emerged as a standard tool for posterior computation. In this article, we present an extension that can efficiently explore target distributions with discontinuous densities. Our extension in particular enables…

Computation · Statistics 2020-06-09 Akihiko Nishimura , David Dunson , Jianfeng Lu

We consider the problem of sampling from posterior distributions for Bayesian models where some parameters are restricted to be orthogonal matrices. Such matrices are sometimes used in neural networks models for reasons of regularization…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-01-24 Viktor Yanush , Dmitry Kropotov

Although Hamiltonian Monte Carlo has proven an empirical success, the lack of a rigorous theoretical understanding of the algorithm has in many ways impeded both principled developments of the method and use of the algorithm in practice. In…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-10-21 M. J. Betancourt , Simon Byrne , Samuel Livingstone , Mark Girolami

The Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) method has been recognized as a powerful sampling tool in computational statistics. We show that performance of HMC can be significantly improved by incorporating importance sampling and an irreversible…

Computation · Statistics 2019-07-26 Tijana Radivojević , Elena Akhmatskaya

Monte Carlo algorithms are a foundational pillar of modern computational science, yet their effective application hinges on a deep understanding of their performance trade offs. This paper presents a critical analysis of the evolution of…

Computation · Statistics 2025-12-23 Ravi Prasad