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Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are simple and extremely powerful techniques to sample from almost arbitrary distributions. The flaw in practice is that it can take a large and/or unknown amount of time to converge to the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-11-13 Xianghang Liu , Justin Domke

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is a widely used algorithm design scheme with many applications. To make efficient use of this method, the key step is to prove that the Markov chain is rapid mixing. Canonical paths is one of the two…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-10-15 Lingxiao Huang , Pinyan Lu , Chihao Zhang

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are foundational algorithms for Bayesian inference and probabilistic modeling. However, most MCMC algorithms are inherently sequential and their time complexity scales linearly with the sequence…

Computation · Statistics 2025-12-03 David M. Zoltowski , Skyler Wu , Xavier Gonzalez , Leo Kozachkov , Scott W. Linderman

We provide quantitative upper bounds on the total variation mixing time of the Markov chain corresponding to the unadjusted Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (uHMC) algorithm. For two general classes of models and fixed time discretization step size…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-10-13 Nawaf Bou-Rabee , Andreas Eberle

It has become increasingly easy nowadays to collect approximate posterior samples via fast algorithms such as variational Bayes, but concerns exist about the estimation accuracy. It is tempting to build solutions that exploit approximate…

Computation · Statistics 2024-06-17 Leo L. Duan , Anirban Bhattacharya

The use of heuristics to assess the convergence and compress the output of Markov chain Monte Carlo can be sub-optimal in terms of the empirical approximations that are produced. Typically a number of the initial states are attributed to…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are often used in clustering since they guarantee asymptotically exact expectations in the infinite-time limit. In finite time, though, slow mixing often leads to poor performance. Modern computing…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-02-24 Tin D. Nguyen , Brian L. Trippe , Tamara Broderick

Many problems of practical interest rely on Continuous-time Markov chains~(CTMCs) defined over combinatorial state spaces, rendering the computation of transition probabilities, and hence probabilistic inference, difficult or impossible…

In this paper we study asymptotic properties of different data-augmentation-type Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms sampling from mixture models comprising discrete as well as continuous random variables. Of particular interest to us is…

Computation · Statistics 2014-04-04 Randal Douc , Florian Maire , Jimmy Olsson

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…

Computational Physics · Physics 2020-08-27 Shikhar Mittal , Marise J. E. Westbroek , Peter R. King , Dimitri D. Vvedensky

In most sampling algorithms, including Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, transition rates between states correspond to the probability of making a transition in a single time step, and are constrained to be less than or equal to 1. We derive a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-10-13 Andrew B. Berger , Mayur Mudigonda , Michael R. DeWeese , Jascha Sohl-Dickstein

The Markov Chain Monte Carlo method is at the heart of efficient approximation schemes for a wide range of problems in combinatorial enumeration and statistical physics. It is therefore very natural and important to determine whether…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-11-13 Pawel Wocjan , Anura Abeyesinghe

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are often used for approximate inference inside learning, but their slow mixing can be difficult to diagnose and the approximations can seriously degrade learning. To alleviate these issues, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-02-25 Jacob Steinhardt , Percy Liang

When implementing Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, perturbation caused by numerical errors is sometimes inevitable. This paper studies how perturbation of MCMC affects the convergence speed and Monte Carlo estimation accuracy.…

Computation · Statistics 2026-01-14 Tiangang Cui , Jing Dong , Ajay Jasra , Xin T. Tong

We propose a very fast approximate Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling framework that is applicable to a large class of sparse Bayesian inference problems, where the computational cost per iteration in several models is of order…

Computation · Statistics 2021-08-17 Yves Atchadé , Liwei Wang

Sampling from the lattice Gaussian distribution plays an important role in various research fields. In this paper, the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)-based sampling technique is advanced in several fronts. Firstly, the spectral gap for the…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2018-07-31 Zheng Wang , Cong Ling

MCMC methods (Monte Carlo Markov Chain) are a class of methods used to perform simulations per a probability distribution $P$. These methods are often used when we have difficulties to directly sample per a given probability distribution…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-01-21 Papa Ngom , Badiassiatta Don Bosco Diatta

Global fits of physics models require efficient methods for exploring high-dimensional and/or multimodal posterior functions. We introduce a novel method for accelerating Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling by pairing a…

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Physics 2023-09-06 N. T. Hunt-Smith , W. Melnitchouk , F. Ringer , N. Sato , A. W Thomas , M. J. White

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a well-established family of algorithms primarily used in Bayesian statistics to sample from a target distribution when direct sampling is challenging. Existing work on Bayesian decision trees uses MCMC.…

Computation · Statistics 2023-01-24 Efthyvoulos Drousiotis , Paul G. Spirakis , Simon Maskell

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are algorithms for sampling probability distributions, commonly applied to the Boltzmann distribution in physical and chemical models such as protein folding and the Ising model. These methods enable…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-12-04 Aingeru Ramos , Jose A. Pascual , Javier Navaridas , Ivan Coluzza