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Monte Carlo experiments produce samples in order to estimate features of a given distribution. However, simultaneous estimation of means and quantiles has received little attention, despite being common practice. In this setting we…

Computation · Statistics 2020-04-24 Nathan Robertson , James M. Flegal , Dootika Vats , Galin L. Jones

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are generally regarded as the gold standard technique for Bayesian inference. They are theoretically well-understood and conceptually simple to apply in practice. The drawback of MCMC is that in…

Computation · Statistics 2019-07-17 Christopher Nemeth , Paul Fearnhead

We devise a Monte Carlo based method for detecting whether a non-negative Markov chain is stable for a given set of parameter values. More precisely, for a given subset of the parameter space, we develop an algorithm that is capable of…

Probability · Mathematics 2016-08-11 Michel Mandjes , Brendan Patch , Neil Walton

We develop a new bidirectional algorithm for estimating Markov chain multi-step transition probabilities: given a Markov chain, we want to estimate the probability of hitting a given target state in $\ell$ steps after starting from a given…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-11-05 Siddhartha Banerjee , Peter Lofgren

Continuous-time Markov chains are mathematical models that are used to describe the state-evolution of dynamical systems under stochastic uncertainty, and have found widespread applications in various fields. In order to make these models…

Probability · Mathematics 2017-06-22 Thomas Krak , Jasper De Bock , Arno Siebes

The predictive quality of machine learning models is typically measured in terms of their (approximate) expected prediction accuracy or the so-called Area Under the Curve (AUC). Minimizing the reciprocals of these measures are the goals of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-03-04 Hiva Ghanbari , Minhan Li , Katya Scheinberg

Statistical signal processing applications usually require the estimation of some parameters of interest given a set of observed data. These estimates are typically obtained either by solving a multi-variate optimization problem, as in the…

Computation · Statistics 2021-07-27 D. Luengo , L. Martino , M. Bugallo , V. Elvira , S. Särkkä

Discrete choice models are commonly used by applied statisticians in numerous fields, such as marketing, economics, finance, and operations research. When agents in discrete choice models are assumed to have differing preferences, exact…

Methodology · Statistics 2010-06-04 Michael Braun , Jon McAuliffe

In parameter estimation problems one computes a posterior distribution over uncertain parameters defined jointly by a prior distribution, a model, and noisy data. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is often used for the numerical solution of…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2017-11-15 Matthias Morzfeld , Marcus S. Day , Ray W. Grout , George Shu Heng Pau , Stefan A. Finsterle , John B. Bell

This article shows how coupled Markov chains that meet exactly after a random number of iterations can be used to generate unbiased estimators of the solutions of the Poisson equation. Through this connection, we re-derive known unbiased…

Computation · Statistics 2025-12-10 Randal Douc , Pierre E. Jacob , Anthony Lee , Dootika Vats

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods provide powerful framework for sampling unknown probability measures across a wide range of scientific applications. In some settings, the target distribution is supported on a lower-dimensional…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-04-27 Xuyuan Wang , Donglin Han

We prove explicit error bounds for Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to compute expectations of functions with unbounded stationary variance. We assume that there is a $p\in(1,2)$ so that the functions have finite $L_p$-norm. For…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2015-01-27 Daniel Rudolf , Nikolaus Schweizer

We present two Monte Carlo sampling algorithms for probabilistic inference that guarantee polynomial-time convergence for a larger class of network than current sampling algorithms provide. These new methods are variants of the known…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-02-18 Malcolm Pradhan , Paul Dagum

Stochastic optimization in learning and inference often relies on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to approximate gradients when exact computation is intractable. However, finite-time MCMC estimators are biased, and reducing this bias…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-02-02 Antoine Godichon-Baggioni , Gabriel Lang , Sylvain Le Corff , Julien Stoehr , Sobihan Surendran

In predictive modeling with simulation or machine learning, it is critical to accurately assess the quality of estimated values through output analysis. In recent decades output analysis has become enriched with methods that quantify the…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-10-27 Kimia Vahdat , Sara Shashaani

In Markov-chain Monte Carlo simulations, estimating statistical errors or confidence intervals of numerically obtained values is an essential task. In this paper, we review several methods for error estimation, such as simple empirical…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-12-23 Yoshihiko Nishikawa , Jun Takahashi , Takashi Takahashi

Inspired by the latest developments in multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) methods and randomised sketching for linear algebra problems we propose a MLMC estimator for real-time processing of matrix structured random data. Our algorithm is…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2020-04-30 Yue Wu , Nick Polydorides

A key quantity of interest in Bayesian inference are expectations of functions with respect to a posterior distribution. Markov Chain Monte Carlo is a fundamental tool to consistently compute these expectations via averaging samples drawn…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-02-10 Heiko Strathmann , Dino Sejdinovic , Mark Girolami

We introduce a simple general method for finding the equilibrium distribution for a class of widely used inexact Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms. The explicit error due to the non-commutivity of the updating operators when numerically…

High Energy Physics - Lattice · Physics 2008-11-26 M. A. Clark , A. D. Kennedy

We study a variable length Markov chain model associated with a group of stationary processes that share the same context tree but each process has potentially different conditional probabilities. We propose a new model selection and…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-01-01 Alexandre Belloni , Roberto I. Oliveira