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Kernel density estimation is a widely used nonparametric approach to estimate an unknown distribution. Recent work in Bayesian predictive inference has considered stochastic processes formed by specifying the predictive distribution for the…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-15 Torey Hilbert

The Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) is a cornerstone statistic for nonparametric two-sample testing, but its test power is dictated entirely by the chosen kernel. Because any fixed kernel inherently fails to distinguish certain…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-11 Yijin Ni , Xiaoming Huo

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a well-established family of algorithms primarily used in Bayesian statistics to sample from a target distribution when direct sampling is challenging. Existing work on Bayesian decision trees uses MCMC.…

Computation · Statistics 2023-01-24 Efthyvoulos Drousiotis , Paul G. Spirakis , Simon Maskell

Markov chain Monte Carlo methods have become popular in statistics as versatile techniques to sample from complicated probability distributions. In this work, we propose a method to parameterize and train transition kernels of Markov chains…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-05 Evgenii Egorov , Ricardo Valperga , Efstratios Gavves

Recent developments in big data and analytics research have produced an abundance of large data sets that are too big to be analyzed in their entirety, due to limits on computer memory or storage capacity. To address these issues,…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-01-06 Alexey Miroshnikov , Erin M. Conlon

Let $\mathscr{P}(E)$ be the space of probability measures on a measurable space $(E,\mathcal{E})$. In this paper we introduce a class of nonlinear Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for simulating from a probability measure…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2011-07-18 Christophe Andrieu , Ajay Jasra , Arnaud Doucet , Pierre Del Moral

We propose a nonparametric two-sample test procedure based on Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) for testing the hypothesis that two samples of functions have the same underlying distribution, using kernels defined on function spaces. This…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-10-20 George Wynne , Andrew B. Duncan

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods asymptotically sample from complex probability distributions. The pseudo-marginal MCMC framework only requires an unbiased estimator of the unnormalized probability distribution function to construct…

Computation · Statistics 2016-05-25 Iain Murray , Matthew M. Graham

Maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) flows suffer from high computational costs in large scale computations. In this paper, we show that MMD flows with Riesz kernels $K(x,y) = - \|x-y\|^r$, $r \in (0,2)$ have exceptional properties which allow…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-21 Johannes Hertrich , Christian Wald , Fabian Altekrüger , Paul Hagemann

Models with intractable normalizing functions have numerous applications. Because the normalizing constants are functions of the parameters of interest, standard Markov chain Monte Carlo cannot be used for Bayesian inference for these…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-03-21 Bokgyeong Kang , John Hughes , Murali Haran

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is one of the most useful approaches to scientific computing because of its flexible construction, ease of use and generality. Indeed, MCMC is indispensable for performing Bayesian analysis. Two critical…

Computation · Statistics 2019-10-18 Vivekananda Roy

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods such as Gibbs sampling are finding widespread use in applied statistics and machine learning. These often lead to difficult computational problems, which are increasingly being solved on parallel and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-06-05 Alexander Terenin , Eric P. Xing

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have not been broadly adopted in Bayesian neural networks (BNNs). This paper initially reviews the main challenges in sampling from the parameter posterior of a neural network via MCMC. Such…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-10-05 Theodore Papamarkou , Jacob Hinkle , M. Todd Young , David Womble

It is widely known that the performance of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) can degrade quickly when targeting computationally expensive posterior distributions, such as when the sample size is large. This has motivated the search for MCMC…

Computation · Statistics 2024-12-02 James E. Johndrow , Natesh S. Pillai , Aaron Smith

Stein kernel has recently shown promising performance on classifying images represented by symmetric positive definite (SPD) matrices. It evaluates the similarity between two SPD matrices through their eigenvalues. In this paper, we argue…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2015-05-19 Jianjia Zhang , Lei Wang , Luping Zhou , Wanqing Li

If the conclusion of a data analysis is sensitive to dropping very few data points, that conclusion might hinge on the particular data at hand rather than representing a more broadly applicable truth. How could we check whether this…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-11-12 Tin D. Nguyen , Ryan Giordano , Rachael Meager , Tamara Broderick

We present a novel neural network Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) statistic by identifying a new connection between neural tangent kernel (NTK) and MMD. This connection enables us to develop a computationally efficient and memory-efficient…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-10-19 Xiuyuan Cheng , Yao Xie

Diffusion models show promise for image restoration, but existing methods often struggle with inconsistent fidelity and undesirable artifacts. To address this, we introduce Kernel Density Steering (KDS), a novel inference-time framework…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2025-10-28 Yuyang Hu , Kangfu Mei , Mojtaba Sahraee-Ardakan , Ulugbek S. Kamilov , Peyman Milanfar , Mauricio Delbracio

The Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) is a widely used multivariate distance metric for two-sample testing. The standard MMD test statistic has an intractable null distribution typically requiring costly resampling or permutation approaches…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-24 Anirban Chatterjee , Aaditya Ramdas

Monte Carlo methods are widely used to estimate observables in many-body quantum systems. However, conventional sampling schemes often require a large number of samples to achieve sufficient accuracy. In this work we propose the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-01-29 Wenxuan Zhang , Dingzu Wang , Dario Poletti