Related papers: Variational Bayes with Synthetic Likelihood
Accurate simulation of complex physical systems enables the development, testing, and certification of control strategies before they are deployed into the real systems. As simulators become more advanced, the analytical tractability of the…
Nonprobability (convenience) samples are increasingly sought to reduce the estimation variance for one or more population variables of interest that are estimated using a randomized survey (reference) sample by increasing the effective…
Inferential models (IMs) offer prior-free, Bayesian-like posterior degrees of belief designed for statistical inference, which feature a frequentist-like calibration property that ensures reliability of said inferences. The catch is that…
In this paper we propose a new deterministic approximation method, called discretization approximation, for Bayesian computation. Discretization approximation is very simple to understand and to implement, It only requires calculating…
Also known as likelihood-free methods, approximate Bayesian computational (ABC) methods have appeared in the past ten years as the most satisfactory approach to untractable likelihood problems, first in genetics then in a broader spectrum…
This paper focuses on variational inference with intractable likelihood functions that can be unbiasedly estimated. A flexible variational approximation based on Gaussian mixtures is developed, by adopting the mixture population Monte Carlo…
Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is a popular technique for approximating likelihoods and is often used in parameter estimation when the likelihood functions are analytically intractable. Although the use of ABC is widespread in many…
The 21st century has seen an enormous growth in the development and use of approximate Bayesian methods. Such methods produce computational solutions to certain intractable statistical problems that challenge exact methods like Markov chain…
In Bayesian inverse problems, one aims at characterizing the posterior distribution of a set of unknowns, given indirect measurements. For non-linear/non-Gaussian problems, analytic solutions are seldom available: Sequential Monte Carlo…
Symbolic data analysis (SDA) aggregates large individual-level datasets into a small number of distributional summaries, such as random rectangles or random histograms. The inference is carried out using these summaries in place of the…
Inference for continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) becomes challenging when the process is only observed at discrete time points. The exact likelihood is intractable, and existing methods often struggle even in medium-dimensional…
Particle Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods are used to carry out inference in non-linear and non-Gaussian state space models, where the posterior density of the states is approximated using particles. Current approaches usually perform…
Variational approaches to approximate Bayesian inference provide very efficient means of performing parameter estimation and model selection. Among these, so-called variational-Laplace or VL schemes rely on Gaussian approximations 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…
The synthetic control method has become a widely popular tool to estimate causal effects with observational data. Despite this, inference for synthetic control methods remains challenging. Often, inferential results rely on linear factor…
Variational inference is a powerful paradigm for approximate Bayesian inference with a number of appealing properties, including support for model learning and data subsampling. By contrast MCMC methods like Hamiltonian Monte Carlo do not…
Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) is a useful class of methods for Bayesian inference when the likelihood function is computationally intractable. In practice, the basic ABC algorithm may be inefficient in the presence of discrepancy…
Estimating copulas with discrete marginal distributions is challenging, especially in high dimensions, because computing the likelihood contribution of each observation requires evaluating $2^{J}$ terms, with $J$ the number of discrete…
This paper presents a Markov chain Monte Carlo method to generate approximate posterior samples in retrospective multiple changepoint problems where the number of changes is not known in advance. The method uses conjugate models whereby the…
Many probabilistic models of interest in scientific computing and machine learning have expensive, black-box likelihoods that prevent the application of standard techniques for Bayesian inference, such as MCMC, which would require access to…