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Related papers: Variational Inference with Hamiltonian Monte Carlo

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Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a state of the art method for sampling from distributions with differentiable densities, but can converge slowly when applied to challenging multimodal problems. Running HMC with a time varying Hamiltonian,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-26 Reuben Cohn-Gordon , Uroš Seljak , Dries Sels

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms offer various strategies for sampling; the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) family of samplers are MCMC algorithms which often exhibit improved mixing properties. The recently introduced magnetic HMC,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-16 James A. Brofos , Roy R. Lederman

Hierarchical models represent a challenging setting for inference algorithms. MCMC methods struggle to scale to large models with many local variables and observations, and variational inference (VI) may fail to provide accurate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-27 Tomas Geffner , Justin Domke

Bayesian formulation of modern day signal processing problems has called for improved Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling algorithms for inference. The need for efficient sampling techniques has become indispensable for high…

Computation · Statistics 2025-10-28 Apratim Shukla , Dootika Vats , Eric C. Chi

We present a scalable Bayesian framework for the analysis of confocal fluorescence spectroscopy data, addressing key limitations in traditional fluorescence correlation spectroscopy methods. Our framework captures molecular motion,…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2024-11-07 Daniel McBride , Ioannis Sgouralis

By leveraging the natural geometry of a smooth probabilistic system, Hamiltonian Monte Carlo yields computationally efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo estimation. At least provided that the algorithm is sufficiently well-tuned. In this…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-01-05 Michael Betancourt

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) improves the computational efficiency of the Metropolis algorithm by reducing its random walk behavior. Riemannian Manifold HMC (RMHMC) further improves HMC's performance by exploiting the geometric properties…

Computation · Statistics 2015-06-22 Shiwei Lan , Vassilios Stathopoulos , Babak Shahbaba , Mark Girolami

In Bayesian inference, Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a popular Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm known for its efficiency in sampling from complex probability distributions. However, its application to models with latent…

Computation · Statistics 2025-04-15 Alaa Amri , Víctor Elvira , Amy L. Wilson

Hierarchical Bayesian models based on Gaussian processes are considered useful for describing complex nonlinear statistical dependencies among variables in real-world data. However, effective Monte Carlo algorithms for inference with these…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-11 Takashi Hayakawa , Satoshi Asai

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) has been widely adopted in the statistics community because of its ability to sample high-dimensional distributions much more efficiently than other Metropolis-based methods. Despite this, HMC often performs…

Computation · Statistics 2019-11-19 Arya A. Pourzanjani , Linda R. Petzold

Modified Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (MHMC) methods combine the ideas behind two popular sampling approaches: Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) and importance sampling. As in the HMC case, the bulk of the computational cost of MHMC algorithms lies…

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-07-05 Alexander Buchholz , Florian Wenzel , Stephan Mandt

The past few years have seen considerable progress in algorithmic development for the generation of gauge fields including the effects of dynamical fermions. The Rational Hybrid Monte Carlo (RHMC) algorithm, where Hybrid Monte Carlo is…

High Energy Physics - Lattice · Physics 2008-11-26 M. A. Clark

Bayesian reasoning in linear mixed-effects models (LMMs) is challenging and often requires advanced sampling techniques like Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). A common approach is to write the model in a probabilistic programming language…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Jinlin Lai , Justin Domke , Daniel Sheldon

We demonstrate the use of a variational method to determine a quantitative lower bound on the rate of convergence of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms as a function of the target density and proposal density. The bound relies on…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2013-05-29 Fergal P. Casey , Joshua J. Waterfall , Ryan N. Gutenkunst , Christopher R. Myers , James P. Sethna

Approximate Bayesian inference for models with computationally expensive, black-box likelihoods poses a significant challenge, especially when the posterior distribution is complex. Many inference methods struggle to explore the parameter…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-11 Francesco Silvestrin , Chengkun Li , Luigi Acerbi

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) has been progressively incorporated within the statistician's toolbox as an alternative sampling method in settings when standard Metropolis-Hastings is inefficient. HMC generates a Markov chain on an augmented…

Computation · Statistics 2026-02-09 Julien Stoehr , Alan Benson , Nial Friel

We propose a fast stochastic Hamilton Monte Carlo (HMC) method, for sampling from a smooth and strongly log-concave distribution. At the core of our proposed method is a variance reduction technique inspired by the recent advance in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-20 Difan Zou , Pan Xu , Quanquan Gu

Recently, the Hamilton Monte Carlo (HMC) has become widespread as one of the more reliable approaches to efficient sample generation processes. However, HMC is difficult to sample in a multimodal posterior distribution because the HMC chain…

Computation · Statistics 2020-06-22 Jonghyun Yun , Minsuk Shin , Ick Hoon Jin , Faming Liang

We present a unified theory of the variational Monte Carlo (VMC) and determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC) methods using a novel density matrix formulation of VMC. We introduce an efficient algorithm for VMC to compute correlation…

Strongly Correlated Electrons · Physics 2018-10-02 Mohammad-Sadegh Vaezi , Abolhassan Vaezi