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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…
We consider the problem of estimating expectations with respect to a target distribution with an unknown normalizing constant, and where even the unnormalized target needs to be approximated at finite resolution. Under such an assumption,…
Many machine learning problems involve Monte Carlo gradient estimators. As a prominent example, we focus on Monte Carlo variational inference (MCVI) in this paper. The performance of MCVI crucially depends on the variance of its stochastic…
Closed-form stochastic filtering equations can be derived in a general setting where probability distributions are replaced by some specific outer measures. In this article, we study how the principles of the sequential Monte Carlo method…
Many problems require to approximate an expected value by some kind of Monte Carlo (MC) sampling, e.g. molecular dynamics (MD) or simulation of stochastic reaction models (also termed kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC)). Often, we are furthermore…
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a powerful Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm for estimating expectations with respect to continuous un-normalized probability distributions. MCMC estimators typically have higher variance than…
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…
Many recent advances in large scale probabilistic inference rely on variational methods. The success of variational approaches depends on (i) formulating a flexible parametric family of distributions, and (ii) optimizing the parameters to…
Bayesian inference allows us to define a posterior distribution over the weights of a generic neural network (NN). Exact posteriors are usually intractable, in which case approximations can be employed. One such approximation - variational…
We design and implement a novel algorithm for computing a multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) estimator of the cumulative distribution function of a quantity of interest in problems with random input parameters or initial conditions. Our approach…
As it has become common to use many computer cores in routine applications, finding good ways to parallelize popular algorithms has become increasingly important. In this paper, we present a parallelization scheme for Markov chain Monte…
Markov chain Monte Carlo is an inherently serial algorithm. Although likelihood calculations for individual steps can sometimes be parallelized, the serial evolution of the process is widely viewed as incompatible with parallelization,…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) samplers form an attractive alternative to MCMC for Bayesian computation. However, their performance depends strongly on the Markov kernels used to rejuvenate particles. We discuss how to calibrate automatically…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC), or particle filtering, is widely used in nonlinear state-space systems, but its performance often suffers from poorly approximated proposal and state-transition distributions. This work introduces a…
We describe and analyze some Monte Carlo methods for manifolds in Euclidean space defined by equality and inequality constraints. First, we give an MCMC sampler for probability distributions defined by un-normalized densities on such…
Bayesian inference for doubly-intractable pairwise exponential graphical models typically involves variations of the exchange algorithm or approximate Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) samplers. However, existing methods for both classes of…
Using concentration inequalities, we give non-asymptotic confidence intervals for estimates obtained by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations, when using the approximation $\mathbb{E}_{\pi} f\approx (1/(N-t_0))\cdot \sum_{i=t_0+1}^N…
The multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) method has been used for a wide variety of stochastic applications. In this paper we consider its use in situations in which input random variables can be replaced by similar approximate random variables…
Monte Carlo integration is a commonly used technique to compute intractable integrals and is typically thought to perform poorly for very high-dimensional integrals. To show that this is not always the case, we examine Monte Carlo…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are essential tools in computational statistics for sampling from unnormalised probability distributions, but can be fragile when targeting high-dimensional, multimodal, or complex target…