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Related papers: Efficient Multiple Importance Sampling Estimators

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We consider the problem of estimating the missing mass, partition function or evidence and its probability distribution in the case that for each sample point in the discrete sample space its (unnormalized) probability mass is revealed.…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-03-16 Bastiaan J. Braams

In applications of Gaussian processes where quantification of uncertainty is a strict requirement, it is necessary to accurately characterize the posterior distribution over Gaussian process covariance parameters. Normally, this is done by…

Computation · Statistics 2016-04-01 Xiaoyu Xiong , Václav Šmídl , Maurizio Filippone

Acceptance-rejection (AR), Independent Metropolis Hastings (IMH) or importance sampling (IS) Monte Carlo (MC) simulation algorithms all involve computing ratios of probability density functions (pdfs). On the other hand, classifiers…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-11 Elouan Argouarc'h , François Desbouvries

Weighting methods in causal inference have been widely used to achieve a desirable level of covariate balancing. However, the existing weighting methods have desirable theoretical properties only when a certain model, either the propensity…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-05-24 Insung Kong , Yuha Park , Joonhyuk Jung , Kwonsang Lee , Yongdai Kim

Some classical uncertainty quantification problems require the estimation of multiple expectations. Estimating all of them accurately is crucial and can have a major impact on the analysis to perform, and standard existing Monte Carlo…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-12-02 Julien Demange-Chryst , François Bachoc , Jérôme Morio

The maximum likelihood estimation is computationally demanding for large datasets, particularly when the likelihood function includes integrals. Subsampling can reduce the computational burden, but it often results in efficiency loss.This…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-27 Miaomiao Su , Qihua Wang , Ruoyu Wang

Importance sampling and independent Metropolis-Hastings (IMH) are among the fundamental building blocks of Monte Carlo methods. Both require a proposal distribution that globally approximates the target distribution. The Radon-Nikodym…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-06-17 George Deligiannidis , Pierre E. Jacob , El Mahdi Khribch , Guanyang Wang

Importance sampling (IS) is a powerful Monte Carlo (MC) technique for approximating intractable integrals, for instance in Bayesian inference. The performance of IS relies heavily on the appropriate choice of the so-called proposal…

Computation · Statistics 2024-12-30 Ali Mousavi , Víctor Elvira

Sequential importance sampling algorithms have been defined to estimate likelihoods in models of ancestral population processes. However, these algorithms are based on features of the models with constant population size, and become…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2016-03-24 Coralie Merle , Raphaël Leblois , François Rousset , Pierre Pudlo

Auxiliary variable is extensively used in survey sampling to improve the precision of estimates. Whenever there is availability of auxiliary information, we want to utilize it in the method of estimation to obtain the most efficient…

Applications · Statistics 2014-10-14 Rajesh Singh , Prayas Sharma

Importance sampling is a promising variance reduction technique for Monte Carlo simulation based derivative pricing. Existing importance sampling methods are based on a parametric choice of the proposal. This article proposes an algorithm…

Applications · Statistics 2009-04-14 Jan C. Neddermeyer

Driven by applications in telecommunication networks, we explore the simulation task of estimating rare event probabilities for tandem queues in their steady state. Existing literature has recognized that importance sampling methods can be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-22 Ruoning Zhao , Xinyun Chen

This paper presents a new approach based on optimization model to determine the weights of experts in the multi-attribute group decision. Firstly, by minimizing the sum of differences between individual evaluations and the overall…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-22 Yuetong Liu , Chaolang Hu , Shiquan Zhang , Qixiao Hu

The effective sample size (ESS) is widely used in sample-based simulation methods for assessing the quality of a Monte Carlo approximation of a given distribution and of related integrals. In this paper, we revisit the approximation of the…

Computation · Statistics 2022-04-14 Víctor Elvira , Luca Martino , Christian P. Robert

The Effective Sample Size (ESS) is an important measure of efficiency of Monte Carlo methods such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and Importance Sampling (IS) techniques. In the IS context, an approximation $\widehat{ESS}$ of the…

Computation · Statistics 2016-09-27 L. Martino , V. Elvira , F. Louzada

Bias in datasets can be very detrimental for appropriate statistical estimation. In response to this problem, importance weighting methods have been developed to match any biased distribution to its corresponding target unbiased…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-12 Antoine de Mathelin , Francois Deheeger , Mathilde Mougeot , Nicolas Vayatis

We develop a new computational approach for "focused" optimal Bayesian experimental design with nonlinear models, with the goal of maximizing expected information gain in targeted subsets of model parameters. Our approach considers…

Computation · Statistics 2019-03-28 Chi Feng , Youssef M. Marzouk

We propose a fully data-driven approach to designing mutual information (MI) estimators. Since any MI estimator is a function of the observed sample from two random variables, we parameterize this function with a neural network (MIST) and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-24 German Gritsai , Megan Richards , Maxime Méloux , Kyunghyun Cho , Maxime Peyrard

In this paper, we propose a novel and generic family of multiple importance sampling estimators. We first revisit the celebrated balance heuristic estimator, a widely used Monte Carlo technique for the approximation of intractable…

Computation · Statistics 2019-04-09 Mateu Sbert , Víctor Elvira

Multiple importance sampling estimators are widely used for computing intractable constants due to its reliability and robustness. The celebrated balance heuristic estimator belongs to this class of methods and has proved very successful in…

Computation · Statistics 2019-09-05 Felipe J Medina-Aguayo , Richard G Everitt