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Deriving Bayesian inference for exponential random graph models (ERGMs) is a challenging "doubly intractable" problem as the normalizing constants of the likelihood and posterior density are both intractable. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)…

Stochastic approximation Monte Carlo (SAMC) has recently been proposed by Liang, Liu and Carroll [J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 102 (2007) 305--320] as a general simulation and optimization algorithm. In this paper, we propose to improve its…

We describe a simple method of umbrella trajectory sampling for Markov chains. The method allows the estimation of large-deviation rate functions, for path-extensive dynamic observables, for an arbitrary number of models within a certain…

Various Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are studied to improve upon random walk Metropolis sampling, for simulation from complex distributions. Examples include Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithms, Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, and…

A great variety of complex systems ranging from user interactions in communication networks to transactions in financial markets can be modeled as temporal graphs, which consist of a set of vertices and a series of timestamped and directed…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a powerful method for drawing samples from non-standard probability distributions and is utilized across many fields and disciplines. Methods such as Metropolis-Adjusted Langevin (MALA) and Hamiltonian…

Cross-entropy method model predictive control (CEM--MPC) is a powerful gradient-free technique for nonlinear optimal control, but its performance is often limited by the reliance on random sampling. This conventional approach can lead to…

Recent masked diffusion models (MDMs) have shown competitive performance compared to autoregressive models (ARMs) for language modeling. While most literature has focused on performance enhancing sampling procedures, efficient sampling from…

In this paper, we propose a sample-based moving horizon estimation (MHE) scheme for general nonlinear systems to estimate the current system state using irregularly and/or infrequently available measurements. The cost function of the MHE…

Markov chain Monte Carlo is a class of algorithms for drawing Markovian samples from high-dimensional target densities to approximate the numerical integration associated with computing statistical expectation, especially in Bayesian…

We introduce an approach for efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling for challenging high-dimensional distributions in sparse Bayesian learning (SBL). The core innovation involves using hierarchical prior-normalizing transport…

The cross entropy (CE) method is a model based search method to solve optimization problems where the objective function has minimal structure. The Monte-Carlo version of the CE method employs the naive sample averaging technique which is…

Subsampling techniques can reduce the computational costs of processing big data. Practical subsampling plans typically involve initial uniform sampling and refined sampling. With a subsample, big data inferences are generally built on the…

Bayesian modelling and computational inference by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a principled framework for large-scale uncertainty quantification, though is limited in practice by computational cost when implemented in the simplest…

Markov chain sampling methods that automatically adapt to characteristics of the distribution being sampled can be constructed by exploiting the principle that one can sample from a distribution by sampling uniformly from the region under…

The Cross-Entropy Method (CEM) is a widely adopted trajectory optimizer in model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL), but its unimodal sampling strategy often leads to premature convergence in multimodal landscapes. In this work, we propose…

In this paper we propose to evaluate and compare Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to estimate the parameters in a generalized extreme value model. We employed the Bayesian approach using traditional Metropolis-Hastings methods,…

This paper brings explicit considerations of distributed computing architectures and data structures into the rigorous design of Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods. A theoretical result established recently by the authors shows that…

We address the estimation problem for general finite mixture models, with a particular focus on the elliptical mixture models (EMMs). Compared to the widely adopted Kullback-Leibler divergence, we show that the Wasserstein distance provides…

We introduce a stable, well tested Python implementation of the affine-invariant ensemble sampler for Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) proposed by Goodman & Weare (2010). The code is open source and has already been used in several published…