Related papers: Estimating the spectral gap of a trace-class Marko…
The Monte Carlo within Metropolis (MCwM) algorithm, interpreted as a perturbed Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm, provides an approach for approximate sampling when the target distribution is intractable. Assuming the unperturbed Markov…
Many problems of practical interest rely on Continuous-time Markov chains~(CTMCs) defined over combinatorial state spaces, rendering the computation of transition probabilities, and hence probabilistic inference, difficult or impossible…
Effective sample size is a standard summary of Markov chain Monte Carlo output, but it is usually attached to scalar or Euclidean summaries chosen by the analyst. For manifold-valued samples this choice is not canonical: coordinate-wise…
Monte Carlo methods use random sampling to estimate numerical quantities which are hard to compute deterministically. One important example is the use in statistical physics of rapidly mixing Markov chains to approximately compute partition…
Variational quantum algorithms are poised to have significant impact on high-dimensional optimization, with applications in classical combinatorics, quantum chemistry, and condensed matter. Nevertheless, the optimization landscape of these…
We propose a sequential Markov chain Monte Carlo (SMCMC) algorithm to sample from a sequence of probability distributions, corresponding to posterior distributions at different times in on-line applications. SMCMC proceeds as in usual MCMC…
Markov chain Monte Carlo samplers produce dependent streams of variates drawn from the limiting distribution of the Markov chain. With this as motivation, we introduce novel univariate kernel density estimators which are appropriate for the…
In this paper, we consider the Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach for random sampling of combinatorial objects. The running time of such an algorithm depends on the total mixing time of the underlying Markov chain and is unknown in…
There is a tension between robustness and efficiency when designing Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling algorithms. Here we focus on robustness with respect to tuning parameters, showing that more sophisticated algorithms tend to be…
Statisticians often use Monte Carlo methods to approximate probability distributions, primarily with Markov chain Monte Carlo and importance sampling. Sequential Monte Carlo samplers are a class of algorithms that combine both techniques to…
Graphs with large spectral gap are important in various fields such as biology, sociology and computer science. In designing such graphs, an important question is how the probability of graphs with large spectral gap behaves. A method based…
We consider nonparametric estimation of the transition operator $P$ of a Markov chain and its transition density $p$ where the singular values of $P$ are assumed to decay exponentially fast. This is for instance the case for periodised,…
We prove a version of McDiarmid's bounded differences inequality for Markov chains, with constants proportional to the mixing time of the chain. We also show variance bounds and Bernstein-type inequalities for empirical averages of Markov…
In this paper we extend the results of the research started by the first author, in which Karlin-McGregor diagonalization of certain reversible Markov chains over countably infinite general state spaces by orthogonal polynomials was used to…
The paper presents efficient approaches for evaluating convergence rate in total variation for finite and general linear Markov chains. The motivation for studying convergence rate in this metric is its usefulness in various limit theorems.…
Gradient information on the sampling distribution can be used to reduce the variance of Monte Carlo estimators via Stein's method. An important application is that of estimating an expectation of a test function along the sample path of a…
Adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, which automatically tune their parameters based on past samples, have proved extremely useful in practice. The self-tuning mechanism makes them `non-Markovian', which means that their…
The aim of this paper is to study the spectral gap and the logarithmic Sobolev constant for continuous spin systems. A simple but general result for estimating the spectral gap of finite dimensional systems is given by Theorem 1.1, in terms…
Monte Carlo algorithms often aim to draw from a distribution $\pi$ by simulating a Markov chain with transition kernel $P$ such that $\pi$ is invariant under $P$. However, there are many situations for which it is impractical or impossible…
Deterministic-scan and random-scan component-wise Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms, such as Gibbs samplers and conditional Metropolis-Hastings, are popular approaches for sampling from multivariate distributions. A long-standing open…