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The Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithm (MALA) is a Metropolis-Hastings method for approximate sampling from continuous distributions. We derive upper bounds for the contraction rate in Kantorovich-Rubinstein-Wasserstein distance of the…

Probability · Mathematics 2014-01-17 Andreas Eberle

Computing the marginal likelihood or evidence is one of the core challenges in Bayesian analysis. While there are many established methods for estimating this quantity, they predominantly rely on using a large number of posterior samples…

Computation · Statistics 2021-02-26 Eric Chuu , Debdeep Pati , Anirban Bhattacharya

Log-concave sampling has witnessed remarkable algorithmic advances in recent years, but the corresponding problem of proving lower bounds for this task has remained elusive, with lower bounds previously known only in dimension one. In this…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-10-31 Sinho Chewi , Jaume de Dios Pont , Jerry Li , Chen Lu , Shyam Narayanan

We study the efficiency of Thompson sampling for contextual bandits. Existing Thompson sampling-based algorithms need to construct a Laplace approximation (i.e., a Gaussian distribution) of the posterior distribution, which is inefficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-23 Pan Xu , Hongkai Zheng , Eric Mazumdar , Kamyar Azizzadenesheli , Anima Anandkumar

This paper proposes a new sampling scheme based on Langevin dynamics that is applicable within pseudo-marginal and particle Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms. We investigate this algorithm's theoretical properties under standard…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-05-30 Christopher Nemeth , Chris Sherlock , Paul Fearnhead

Discretization of continuous-time diffusion processes is a widely recognized method for sampling. However, the canonical Euler Maruyama discretization of the Langevin diffusion process, referred as Unadjusted Langevin Algorithm (ULA),…

Computation · Statistics 2021-07-28 Dao Nguyen , Xin Dang , Yixin Chen

Recently there have been exciting developments in Monte Carlo methods, with the development of new MCMC and sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) algorithms which are based on continuous-time, rather than discrete-time, Markov processes. This has…

Computation · Statistics 2020-09-29 Paul Fearnhead , Joris Bierkens , Murray Pollock , Gareth O Roberts

The goal of this paper is to study convergence and error estimates of the Monte Carlo method for the Navier-Stokes equations with random data. To discretize in space and time, the Monte Carlo method is combined with a suitable deterministic…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2022-05-10 Eduard Feireisl , Mária Lukáčová - Medviďová , Bangwei She , Yuhuan Yuan

The paper proposes a Riemannian Manifold Hamiltonian Monte Carlo sampler to resolve the shortcomings of existing Monte Carlo algorithms when sampling from target densities that may be high dimensional and exhibit strong correlations. The…

Computation · Statistics 2019-12-18 Mark Girolami , Ben Calderhead , Siu A. Chin

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have a drawback when working with a target distribution or likelihood function that is computationally expensive to evaluate, specially when working with big data. This paper focuses on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-22 Asif J. Chowdhury , Gabriel Terejanu

We introduce a theoretical framework for sampling from unnormalized densities based on a smoothing scheme that uses an isotropic Gaussian kernel with a single fixed noise scale. We prove one can decompose sampling from a density (minimal…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-10-02 Saeed Saremi , Ji Won Park , Francis Bach

Path integrals with complex actions are encountered for many physical systems ranging from spin- or mass-imbalanced atomic gases and graphene to quantum chromo-dynamics at finite density to the non-equilibrium evolution of quantum systems.…

High Energy Physics - Lattice · Physics 2022-09-01 Lukas Kades , Martin Gärttner , Thomas Gasenzer , Jan M. Pawlowski

Based on a new coupling approach, we prove that the transition step of the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo algorithm is contractive w.r.t. a carefully designed Kantorovich (L1 Wasserstein) distance. The lower bound for the contraction rate is…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-07-30 Nawaf Bou-Rabee , Andreas Eberle , Raphael Zimmer

We consider the problem of sampling from a strongly log-concave density in $\mathbb{R}^d$, and prove a non-asymptotic upper bound on the mixing time of the Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithm (MALA). The method draws samples by…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-12-12 Raaz Dwivedi , Yuansi Chen , Martin J. Wainwright , Bin Yu

We give the first rigorous proof of the convergence of Riemannian Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, a general (and practical) method for sampling Gibbs distributions. Our analysis shows that the rate of convergence is bounded in terms of natural…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2017-10-18 Yin Tat Lee , Santosh S. Vempala

An effective approach for sampling from unnormalized densities is based on the idea of gradually transporting samples from an easy prior to the complicated target distribution. Two popular methods are (1) Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC), where…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-09-09 Junhua Chen , Lorenz Richter , Julius Berner , Denis Blessing , Gerhard Neumann , Anima Anandkumar

Sampling from various kinds of distributions is an issue of paramount importance in statistics since it is often the key ingredient for constructing estimators, test procedures or confidence intervals. In many situations, the exact sampling…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2018-11-05 Avetik Karagulyan

In this paper, we propose a novel class of Piecewise Deterministic Markov Processes (PDMPs) that are designed to sample from probability distributions $\pi$ supported on a convex set $\mathcal{M}$. This class of PDMPs adapts the concept of…

Computation · Statistics 2026-05-01 Joël Tatang Demano , Paul Dobson , Konstantinos Zygalakis

Markov chain Monte Carlo samplers based on discretizations of (overdamped) Langevin dynamics are commonly used in the Bayesian inference and computational statistical physics literature to estimate high-dimensional integrals. One can…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-08-11 Tony Lelièvre , Régis Santet , Gabriel Stoltz

We consider sampling from composite densities on $\mathbb{R}^d$ of the form $d\pi(x) \propto \exp(-f(x) - g(x))dx$ for well-conditioned $f$ and convex (but possibly non-smooth) $g$, a family generalizing restrictions to a convex set,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-11 Ruoqi Shen , Kevin Tian , Yin Tat Lee