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Related papers: Complexity Bounds for MCMC via Diffusion Limits

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In this paper we establish a diffusion limit for a multivariate continuous time Markov chain whose components are indexed by vertices of a finite graph. The components take values in a common finite set of non-negative integers and evolve…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-09-15 Anatolii Puhalskii , Vadim Shcherbakov

Langevin Monte Carlo (LMC) algorithms are popular Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to sample a target probability distribution, which arises in many applications in machine learning. Inspired by regime-switching stochastic…

Computation · Statistics 2025-09-03 Xiaoyu Wang , Yingli Wang , Lingjiong Zhu

We introduce a Monte Carlo algorithm to efficiently compute transport properties of chaotic dynamical systems. Our method exploits the importance sampling technique that favors trajectories in the tail of the distribution of displacements,…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2018-05-25 Diego Tapias , David P. Sanders , Eduardo G. Altmann

In offline reinforcement learning (RL), the absence of active exploration calls for attention on the model robustness to tackle the sim-to-real gap, where the discrepancy between the simulated and deployed environments can significantly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-28 He Wang , Laixi Shi , Yuejie Chi

The aim of this note is to investigate the concentration properties of unbounded functions of geometrically ergodic Markov chains. We derive concentration properties of centered functions with respect to the square of the Lyapunov's…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2016-09-14 Olivier Wintenberger

In this paper, we prove large deviation principles for the empirical measures associated with the Independent Metropolis Hastings (IMH) sampler and the Metropolis-adjusted Langevin Algorithm (MALA). These are the first large deviation…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-02-23 Federica Milinanni , Pierre Nyquist

We study multiproposal Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms, such as Multiple-try or generalised Metropolis-Hastings schemes, which have recently received renewed attention due to their amenability to parallel computing. First, we prove that…

Computation · Statistics 2024-10-31 Francesco Pozza , Giacomo Zanella

The problem of optimally scaling the proposal distribution in a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm is critical to the quality of the generated samples. Much work has gone into obtaining such results for various Metropolis-Hastings (MH)…

Computation · Statistics 2022-02-07 Sanket Agrawal , Dootika Vats , Krzysztof Łatuszyński , Gareth O. Roberts

In this paper we investigate the continuum limits of a class of Markov chains. The investigation of such limits is motivated by the desire to model very large networks. We show that under some conditions, a sequence of Markov chains…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2011-06-22 Yang Zhang , Edwin K. P. Chong , Jan Hannig , Donald Estep

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…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2013-05-01 Viet Ha Hoang , Christoph Schwab , Andrew M. Stuart

Convergence analysis of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods in high-dimensional statistical applications is increasingly recognized. In this paper, we develop general mixing time bounds for Metropolis-Hastings algorithms on discrete spaces by…

Computation · Statistics 2025-07-29 Hyunwoong Chang , Quan Zhou

Light and Widely Applicable (LWA-) MCMC is a novel approximation of the Metropolis-Hastings kernel targeting a posterior distribution defined on a large number of observations. Inspired by Approximate Bayesian Computation, we design a…

Methodology · Statistics 2015-11-25 Florian Maire , Nial Friel , Pierre Alquier

Sampling from score-based diffusion models incurs bias due to both time discretisation and the approximation of the score function. A common strategy for reducing this bias is to apply corrector steps based on the unadjusted Langevin…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-12 Kevin H. Lam , Tyler Farghly , Christopher Williams , Jun Yang , Yee Whye Teh , Arnaud Doucet

This study investigates the limitations of applying Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to arbitrary objective functions, focusing on a two-block MCMC framework which alternates between Metropolis-Hastings and Gibbs sampling. While such…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-17 Jared N. Lakhani , Etienne Pienaar

The Robbins-Monro algorithm is a recursive, simulation-based stochastic procedure to approximate the zeros of a function that can be written as an expectation. It is known that under some technical assumptions, Gaussian limit distributions…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-10-22 Valentin Konakov , Enno Mammen , Lorick Huang

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are one of the most popular classes of algorithms for sampling from a target probability distribution. A rising trend in recent years consists in analyzing the convergence of MCMC algorithms using…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-04-30 Federica Milinanni

We derive the first explicit bounds for the spectral gap of a random walk Metropolis algorithm on $R^d$ for any value of the proposal variance, which when scaled appropriately recovers the correct $d^{-1}$ dependence on dimension for…

Probability · Mathematics 2024-09-25 Christophe Andrieu , Anthony Lee , Sam Power , Andi Q. Wang

This work develops a powerful and versatile framework for determining acceptance ratios in Metropolis-Hastings type Markov kernels widely used in statistical sampling problems. Our approach allows us to derive new classes of kernels which…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-07-21 Nathan E. Glatt-Holtz , Justin A. Krometis , Cecilia F. Mondaini

Scaling of proposals for Metropolis algorithms is an important practical problem in MCMC implementation. Criteria for scaling based on empirical acceptance rates of algorithms have been found to work consistently well across a broad range…

Computation · Statistics 2009-09-07 Chris Sherlock , Gareth Roberts

Markov chain Monte Carlo methods provide an essential tool in statistics for sampling from complex probability distributions. While the standard approach to MCMC involves constructing discrete-time reversible Markov chains whose transition…

Computation · Statistics 2020-09-29 Joris Bierkens , Andrew Duncan