Related papers: Ergodicity of Approximate MCMC Chains with Applica…
Many modern applications collect highly imbalanced categorical data, with some categories relatively rare. Bayesian hierarchical models combat data sparsity by borrowing information, while also quantifying uncertainty. However, posterior…
Adaptive Monte Carlo schemes developed over the last years usually seek to ensure ergodicity of the sampling process in line with MCMC tradition. This poses constraints on what is possible in terms of adaptation. In the general case…
Mixtures of linear mixed models (MLMMs) are useful for clustering grouped data and can be estimated by likelihood maximization through the EM algorithm. The conventional approach to determining a suitable number of components is to compare…
We study Bayesian inversion for a model elliptic PDE with unknown diffusion coefficient. We provide complexity analyses of several Markov Chain-Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for the efficient numerical evaluation of expectations under the…
We are interested in the analysis of very large continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) with many distinct rates. Such models arise naturally in the context of reliability analysis, e.g., of computer network performability analysis, of power…
This paper describes sufficient conditions to ensure the correct ergodicity of the Adaptive Metropolis (AM) algorithm of Haario, Saksman and Tamminen [Bernoulli 7 (2001) 223--242] for target distributions with a noncompact support. The…
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…
We address the problem of computing reliable policies in reinforcement learning problems with limited data. In particular, we compute policies that achieve good returns with high confidence when deployed. This objective, known as the…
For Markov chains and Markov processes exhibiting a form of stochastic monotonicity (larger states shift up transition probabilities in terms of stochastic dominance), stability and ergodicity results can be obtained using order-theoretic…
Over the last 25 years, techniques based on drift and minorization (d&m) have been mainstays in the convergence analysis of MCMC algorithms. However, results presented herein suggest that d&m may be less useful in the emerging area of…
Traditional MCMC algorithms are computationally intensive and do not scale well to large data. In particular, the Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm requires passing over the entire dataset to evaluate the likelihood ratio in each…
Let $\pi$ denote the intractable posterior density that results when the likelihood from a multivariate linear regression model with errors from a scale mixture of normals is combined with the standard non-informative prior. There is a…
We consider whether ergodic Markov chains with bounded step size remain bounded in probability when their transitions are modified by an adversary on a bounded subset. We provide counterexamples to show that the answer is no in general, and…
We propose a novel approximate inference algorithm that approximates a target distribution by amortising the dynamics of a user-selected MCMC sampler. The idea is to initialise MCMC using samples from an approximation network, apply the…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a flexible approach to approximate sampling from intractable probability distributions, with a rich theoretical foundation and comprising a wealth of exemplar algorithms. While the qualitative correctness…
In this paper, we give quantitative bounds on the $f$-total variation distance from convergence of an Harris recurrent Markov chain on an arbitrary under drift and minorisation conditions implying ergodicity at a sub-geometric rate. These…
Bayesian modelling and computational inference by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a principled framework for large-scale uncertainty quantification, though is limited in practice by computational cost when implemented in the simplest…
The widespread use of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for high-dimensional applications has motivated research into the scalability of these algorithms with respect to the dimension of the problem. Despite this, numerous problems…
The use of higher-order stochastic processes such as nonlinear Markov chains or vertex-reinforced random walks is significantly growing in recent years as they are much better at modeling high dimensional data and nonlinear dynamics in…
We consider the problem of fitting variational posterior approximations using stochastic optimization methods. The performance of these approximations depends on (1) how well the variational family matches the true posterior…