Related papers: Scan Order in Gibbs Sampling: Models in Which it M…
The Gumbel trick is a method to sample from a discrete probability distribution, or to estimate its normalizing partition function. The method relies on repeatedly applying a random perturbation to the distribution in a particular way, each…
Graded posets frequently arise throughout combinatorics, where it is natural to try to count the number of elements of a fixed rank. These counting problems are often $\#\textbf{P}$-complete, so we consider approximation algorithms for…
When partitioning workflows in realistic scenarios, the knowledge of the processing units is often vague or unknown. A naive approach to addressing this issue is to perform many controlled experiments for different workloads, each…
We present a modified Gibbs sampler for general state spaces. We establish that this modification can lead to substantial gains in statistical efficiency while maintaining the overall quality of convergence. We illustrate our results in two…
MCMC algorithms offer empirically efficient tools for sampling from a target distribution $\pi(x) \propto \exp(-V(x))$. However, on the theory side, MCMC algorithms suffer from slow mixing rate when $\pi(x)$ is non-log-concave. Our work…
We determine the mixing time of a simple Gibbs sampler on the unit simplex, confirming a conjecture of Aldous. The upper bound is based on a two-step coupling, where the first step is a simple contraction argument and the second step is a…
Understanding the local structure of a graph provides valuable insights about the underlying phenomena from which the graph has originated. Sampling and examining k-subgraphs is a widely used approach to understand the local structure of a…
The (conditional or unconditional) distribution of the continuous scan statistic in a one-dimensional Poisson process may be approximated by that of a discrete analogue via time discretization (to be referred to as the discrete…
The Hidden Markov Model (HMM) is a widely-used statistical model for handling sequential data. However, the presence of missing observations in real-world datasets often complicates the application of the model. The EM algorithm and Gibbs…
Gibbs-type random probability measures and the exchangeable random partitions they induce represent the subject of a rich and active literature. They provide a probabilistic framework for a wide range of theoretical and applied problems…
Gibbs-type exchangeable random partitions, which is a class of multiplicative measures on the set of positive integer partitions, appear in various contexts, including Bayesian statistics, random combinatorial structures, and stochastic…
This paper proposes an efficient implementation of the generalized labeled multi-Bernoulli (GLMB) filter by combining the prediction and update into a single step. In contrast to the original approach which involves separate truncations in…
It is shown that a seemingly harmless reordering of the steps in a block Gibbs sampler can actually invalidate the algorithm. In particular, the Markov chain that is simulated by the "out-of-order" block Gibbs sampler does not have the…
Consistent sampling is a technique for specifying, in small space, a subset $S$ of a potentially large universe $U$ such that the elements in $S$ satisfy a suitably chosen sampling condition. Given a subset $\mathcal{I}\subseteq U$ it…
We introduce a new Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampler called the Markov Interacting Importance Sampler (MIIS). The MIIS sampler uses conditional importance sampling (IS) approximations to jointly sample the current state of the Markov…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are a workhorse of probabilistic modeling and inference, but are difficult to debug, and are prone to silent failure if implemented naively. We outline several strategies for testing the…
Hybrid Gibbs samplers represent a prominent class of approximated Gibbs algorithms that utilize Markov chains to approximate conditional distributions, with the Metropolis-within-Gibbs algorithm standing out as a well-known example. Despite…
Markov jump processes (or continuous-time Markov chains) are a simple and important class of continuous-time dynamical systems. In this paper, we tackle the problem of simulating from the posterior distribution over paths in these models,…
Gaussian Boson Sampling (GBS), which can be realized with a photonic quantum computing model, perform some special kind of sampling tasks. In [4], we introduced algorithms that use GBS samples to approximate Gaussian expectation problems.…
To improve the efficiency of Monte Carlo estimation, practitioners are turning to biased Markov chain Monte Carlo procedures that trade off asymptotic exactness for computational speed. The reasoning is sound: a reduction in variance due to…