Related papers: Substochastic Monte Carlo Algorithms
In many problems, complex non-Gaussian and/or nonlinear models are required to accurately describe a physical system of interest. In such cases, Monte Carlo algorithms are remarkably flexible and extremely powerful approaches to solve such…
We introduce a powerful and flexible MCMC algorithm for stochastic simulation. The method builds on a pseudo-marginal method originally introduced in [Genetics 164 (2003) 1139--1160], showing how algorithms which are approximations to an…
The problem of optimising functions with intractable gradients frequently arise in machine learning and statistics, ranging from maximum marginal likelihood estimation procedures to fine-tuning of generative models. Stochastic approximation…
We propose a novel class of Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) algorithms, appropriate for inference in probabilistic graphical models. This class of algorithms adopts a divide-and-conquer approach based upon an auxiliary tree-structured…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are generally regarded as the gold standard technique for Bayesian inference. They are theoretically well-understood and conceptually simple to apply in practice. The drawback of MCMC is that in…
A number of optimal decision problems with uncertainty can be formulated into a stochastic optimal control framework. The Least-Squares Monte Carlo (LSMC) algorithm is a popular numerical method to approach solutions of such stochastic…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods comprise one of the most successful approaches to approximate Bayesian filtering. However, SMC without good proposal distributions struggle in high dimensions. We propose nested sequential Monte Carlo…
The Self-Learning Monte Carlo (SLMC) method is a Monte Carlo approach that has emerged in recent years by integrating concepts from machine learning with conventional Monte Carlo techniques. Designed to accelerate the numerical study of…
Model comparison for the purposes of selection, averaging and validation is a problem found throughout statistics. Within the Bayesian paradigm, these problems all require the calculation of the posterior probabilities of models within a…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods are a widely used set of computational tools for inference in non-linear non-Gaussian state-space models. We propose a new SMC algorithm to compute the expectation of additive functionals recursively.…
Stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SG-MCMC) methods are Bayesian analogs to popular stochastic optimization methods; however, this connection is not well studied. We explore this relationship by applying simulated annealing to an…
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…
For regular particle filter algorithm or Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods, the initial weights are traditionally dependent on the proposed distribution, the posterior distribution at the current timestamp in the sampled sequence, and…
Approximate inference in probabilistic graphical models (PGMs) can be grouped into deterministic methods and Monte-Carlo-based methods. The former can often provide accurate and rapid inferences, but are typically associated with biases…
Based on the principles of importance sampling and resampling, sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) encompasses a large set of powerful techniques dealing with complex stochastic dynamic systems. Many of these systems possess strong memory, with…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) algorithms were originally designed for estimating intractable conditional expectations within state-space models, but are now routinely used to generate approximate samples in the context of general-purpose…
Monte Carlo (MC) sampling algorithms are an extremely widely-used technique to estimate expectations of functions f(x), especially in high dimensions. Control variates are a very powerful technique to reduce the error of such estimates, but…
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a popular Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm that generates proposals for a Metropolis-Hastings algorithm by simulating the dynamics of a Hamiltonian system. However, HMC is sensitive to large time…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods are not only a popular tool in the analysis of state space models, but offer an alternative to MCMC in situations where Bayesian inference must proceed via simulation. This paper introduces a new SMC…
In online clustering problems, there is often a large amount of uncertainty over possible cluster assignments that cannot be resolved until more data are observed. This difficulty is compounded when clusters follow complex distributions, as…