Related papers: Efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo Sampling for Hi…
Hybrid Monte Carlo is a powerful Markov Chain Monte Carlo method for sampling from complex continuous distributions. However, a major limitation of HMC is its inability to be applied to discrete domains due to the lack of gradient signal.…
Hidden semi-Markov Models (HSMM's) - while broadly in use - are restricted to a discrete and uniform time grid. They are thus not well suited to explain often irregularly spaced discrete event data from continuous-time phenomena. We show…
We develop a modular approach to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling for unnormalized target densities. In this approach, Markov chains are constructed in parallel, each constrained to a subset of the target space. The Monte Carlo…
nimble is an R package for constructing algorithms and conducting inference on hierarchical models. The nimble package provides a unique combination of flexible model specification and the ability to program model-generic algorithms.…
We construct a new framework for accelerating Markov chain Monte Carlo in posterior sampling problems where standard methods are limited by the computational cost of the likelihood, or of numerical models embedded therein. Our approach…
Various Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are studied to improve upon random walk Metropolis sampling, for simulation from complex distributions. Examples include Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithms, Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, and…
Restricted Boltzmann Machines are simple and powerful generative models that can encode any complex dataset. Despite all their advantages, in practice the trainings are often unstable and it is difficult to assess their quality because the…
The hidden Markov model (HMM) is a widely-used generative model that copes with sequential data, assuming that each observation is conditioned on the state of a hidden Markov chain. In this paper, we derive a novel algorithm to cluster HMMs…
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a powerful Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for performing approximate inference in complex probabilistic models of continuous variables. In common with many MCMC methods, however, the standard HMC…
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a Markov chain algorithm for sampling from a high-dimensional distribution with density $e^{-f(x)}$, given access to the gradient of $f$. A particular case of interest is that of a $d$-dimensional Gaussian…
Bayesian max-margin models have shown superiority in various practical applications, such as text categorization, collaborative prediction, social network link prediction and crowdsourcing, and they conjoin the flexibility of Bayesian…
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo is a prominent Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm, which employs symplectic integrators to sample from high dimensional target distributions in many applications, such as statistical mechanics, Bayesian statistics…
We introduce a new Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach designed for efficient sampling of highly correlated and multimodal posteriors. Parallel tempering, though effective, is a costly technique for sampling such posteriors. Our…
This paper is concerned with the computational complexity of learning the Hidden Markov Model (HMM). Although HMMs are some of the most widely used tools in sequential and time series modeling, they are cryptographically hard to learn in…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods provide powerful framework for sampling unknown probability measures across a wide range of scientific applications. In some settings, the target distribution is supported on a lower-dimensional…
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…
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a powerful algorithm to sample latent variables from Bayesian models. The advent of probabilistic programming languages (PPLs) frees users from writing inference algorithms and lets users focus on modeling.…
We explore a general framework in Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling where sequential proposals are tried as a candidate for the next state of the Markov chain. This sequential-proposal framework can be applied to various existing…
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…
Likelihood-free inference methods based on neural conditional density estimation were shown to drastically reduce the simulation burden in comparison to classical methods such as ABC. When applied in the context of any latent variable…