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An important task in machine learning and statistics is the approximation of a probability measure by an empirical measure supported on a discrete point set. Stein Points are a class of algorithms for this task, which proceed by…

This paper uses the generator comparison approach of Stein's method to analyze the gap between steady-state distributions of Markov chains and diffusion processes. The "standard" generator comparison approach starts with the Poisson…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-10-11 Anton Braverman

We suggest that the tools of contraction analysis for deterministic systems can be applied towards studying the convergence behavior of stochastic dynamical systems in the Wasserstein metric. In particular, we consider the case of Ito…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-03-01 Jake Bouvrie , Jean-Jacques Slotine

Stein discrepancies have emerged as a powerful tool for retrospective improvement of Markov chain Monte Carlo output. However, the question of how to design Markov chains that are well-suited to such post-processing has yet to be addressed.…

Computation · Statistics 2023-05-18 Congye Wang , Wilson Chen , Heishiro Kanagawa , Chris. J. Oates

We develop diffusion-based samplers for target distributions known up to a normalising constant. To this end, we rely on the well-known diffusion path that smoothly interpolates between a simple base distribution and the target, popularised…

This work presents the first systematic development of Stein's method for matrix distributions. We establish the basic essential ingredients of Stein's method for matrix normal approximation: we derive a generator-based Stein identity from…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-01-19 Robert E. Gaunt , Frédéric Ouimet , Donald Richards

Sampling based on score diffusions has led to striking empirical results, and has attracted considerable attention from various research communities. It depends on availability of (approximate) Stein score functions for various levels of…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-01-01 M. J. Wainwright

We derive and analyze new diffusion approximations of stationary distributions of Markov chains that are based on second- and higher-order terms in the expansion of the Markov chain generator. Our approximations achieve a higher degree of…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-07-12 Anton Braverman , J. G. Dai , Xiao Fang

In this paper, we apply the Stein's method in the context of point processes, namely when the target measure is the distribution of a finite Poisson point process. We show that the so-called Kantorovich-Rubinstein distance between such a…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-07-09 Laurent Decreusefond , Aurélien Vasseur

Motivated by the omnipresence of extreme value distributions in limit theorems involving extremes of random processes, we adapt Stein's method to include these laws as possible target distributions. We do so by using the generator approach…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-07-02 Bruno Costacèque , Laurent Decreusefond

Stein operators are differential operators which arise within the so-called Stein's method for stochastic approximation. We propose a new mechanism for constructing such operators for arbitrary (continuous or discrete) parametric…

Probability · Mathematics 2013-05-23 Christophe Ley , Yvik Swan

Starting from the probability distribution of finite N-body systems, which maximises the Havrda--Charv\'at entropy, we build a Stein-type goodness-of-fit test. The Maxwell--Boltzmann distribution is exact only in the thermodynamic limit,…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2026-02-16 Jae Wan Shim

Stein discrepancies (SDs) monitor convergence and non-convergence in approximate inference when exact integration and sampling are intractable. However, the computation of a Stein discrepancy can be prohibitive if the Stein operator - often…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-26 Jackson Gorham , Anant Raj , Lester Mackey

We develop exact Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for discretely-sampled, directly and indirectly observed diffusions. The qualification "exact" refers to the fact that the invariant and limiting distribution of the Markov chains is the…

Score-based diffusion models have demonstrated outstanding empirical performance in machine learning and artificial intelligence, particularly in generating high-quality new samples from complex probability distributions. Improving the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-30 Yuchen Jiao , Gen Li

We establish inequalities for assessing the distance between the distribution of errors of partially observed high-frequency statistics of multidimensional L\'evy processes and that of a mixed Gaussian random variable. Furthermore, we…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-04-14 Chiara Amorino , Arturo Jaramillo , Mark Podolskij

Much of machine learning relies on comparing distributions with discrepancy measures. Stein's method creates discrepancy measures between two distributions that require only the unnormalized density of one and samples from the other. Stein…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-07-21 Raghav Singhal , Xintian Han , Saad Lahlou , Rajesh Ranganath

The use of heuristics to assess the convergence and compress the output of Markov chain Monte Carlo can be sub-optimal in terms of the empirical approximations that are produced. Typically a number of the initial states are attributed to…

We introduce a version of Stein's method of comparison of operators specifically tailored to the problem of bounding the Wasserstein-1 distance between continuous and discrete distributions on the real line. Our approach rests on a new…

Probability · Mathematics 2023-11-03 Gilles Germain , Yvik Swan

The concentration inequality approach for normal approximation by Stein's method is generalized to the multivariate setting. We use this approach to prove a non-smooth function distance for multivariate normal approximation for standardized…

Probability · Mathematics 2015-05-19 Louis H. Y. Chen , Xiao Fang