Related papers: Strong Consistency of Multivariate Spectral Varian…

An admissible estimator of the eigenvalues of the variance-covariance matrix is given for multivariate normal distributions with respect to the scale-invariant squared error loss.

Monte Carlo (MC) sampling algorithms are an extremely widely-used technique to estimate expectations of functions f(x), especially in high dimensions. Control variates are a very powerful technique to reduce the error of such estimates, but…

Markov chains are fundamental models for stochastic dynamics, with applications in a wide range of areas such as population dynamics, queueing systems, reinforcement learning, and Monte Carlo methods. Estimating the transition matrix and…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is one of the most useful approaches to scientific computing because of its flexible construction, ease of use and generality. Indeed, MCMC is indispensable for performing Bayesian analysis. Two critical…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a powerful method for drawing samples from non-standard probability distributions and is utilized across many fields and disciplines. Methods such as Metropolis-Adjusted Langevin (MALA) and Hamiltonian…

A novel class of non-reversible Markov chain Monte Carlo schemes relying on continuous-time piecewise-deterministic Markov Processes has recently emerged. In these algorithms, the state of the Markov process evolves according to a…

We introduce a gradient-based learning method to automatically adapt Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) proposal distributions to intractable targets. We define a maximum entropy regularised objective function, referred to as generalised speed…

Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods are widely used to draw samples from intractable target distributions. Particle degeneracy can hinder the use of SMC when the target distribution is highly constrained or multimodal. As a motivating…

The Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) sampling algorithm exploits Hamiltonian dynamics to construct efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), which has become increasingly popular in machine learning and statistics. Since HMC uses the gradient…

The Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is used to evaluate the imaginary-time path integral of a quantum oscillator with a potential that includes both a quadratic term and a quartic term whose coupling is varied by several orders of…

The utility of a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm is, in large part, determined by the size of the spectral gap of the corresponding Markov operator. However, calculating (and even approximating) the spectral gaps of practical Monte Carlo…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) provides a feasible method for inferring Hidden Markov models, however, it is often computationally prohibitive, especially constrained by the curse of dimensionality, as the Monte Carlo sampler traverses…

Recent attempts to constrain cosmological variation in the fine structure constant, alpha, using quasar absorption lines have yielded two statistical samples which initially appear to be inconsistent. One of these samples was subsequently…

We introduce a new Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampler for infinite-dimensional inverse problems. Our new sampler is based on the affine invariant ensemble sampler, which uses interacting walkers to adapt to the covariance structure of…

A standard way to move particles in a SMC sampler is to apply several steps of a MCMC (Markov chain Monte Carlo) kernel. Unfortunately, it is not clear how many steps need to be performed for optimal performance. In addition, the output of…

Many problems in the physical sciences, machine learning, and statistical inference necessitate sampling from a high-dimensional, multi-modal probability distribution. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, the ubiquitous tool for this…

We show that the variance of the Monte Carlo estimator that is importance sampled from an exponential family is a convex function of the natural parameter of the distribution. With this insight, we propose an adaptive importance sampling…

Monte Carlo methods represent the "de facto" standard for approximating complicated integrals involving multidimensional target distributions. In order to generate random realizations from the target distribution, Monte Carlo techniques use…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods such as Gibbs sampling are finding widespread use in applied statistics and machine learning. These often lead to difficult computational problems, which are increasingly being solved on parallel and…

Pseudo-marginal Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for sampling from intractable distributions have gained recent interest and have been theoretically studied in considerable depth. Their main appeal is that they are exact, in the sense that…