Related papers: Learning Model Reparametrizations: Implicit Variat…
In this paper we propose a novel variance reduction approach for additive functionals of Markov chains based on minimization of an estimate for the asymptotic variance of these functionals over suitable classes of control variates. A…
Traditionally, the field of computational Bayesian statistics has been divided into two main subfields: variational methods and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). In recent years, however, several methods have been proposed based on combining…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms provide a very general recipe for estimating properties of complicated distributions. While their use has become commonplace and there is a large literature on MCMC theory and practice, MCMC users…
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)…
We develop a method to combine Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and variational inference (VI), leveraging the advantages of both inference approaches. Specifically, we improve the variational distribution by running a few MCMC steps. To…
Leveraging well-established MCMC strategies, we propose MCMC-interactive variational inference (MIVI) to not only estimate the posterior in a time constrained manner, but also facilitate the design of MCMC transitions. Constructing a…
In this article we propose a novel MCMC method based on deterministic transformations T: X x D --> X where X is the state-space and D is some set which may or may not be a subset of X. We refer to our new methodology as Transformation-based…
We introduce Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms based on numerical approximations of piecewise-deterministic Markov processes obtained with the framework of splitting schemes. We present unadjusted as well as adjusted algorithms,…
Estimating the predictive uncertainty of a Bayesian learning model is critical in various decision-making problems, e.g., reinforcement learning, detecting adversarial attack, self-driving car. As the model posterior is almost always…
Replica exchange Monte Carlo (reMC), also known as parallel tempering, is an important technique for accelerating the convergence of the conventional Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. However, such a method requires the evaluation…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods provide powerful framework for sampling unknown probability measures across a wide range of scientific applications. In some settings, the target distribution is supported on a lower-dimensional…
In this paper we study asymptotic properties of different data-augmentation-type Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms sampling from mixture models comprising discrete as well as continuous random variables. Of particular interest to us is…
We demonstrate the use of a variational method to determine a quantitative lower bound on the rate of convergence of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms as a function of the target density and proposal density. The bound relies on…
Stochastic variational inference algorithms are derived for fitting various heteroskedastic time series models. We examine Gaussian, t, and skew-t response GARCH models and fit these using Gaussian variational approximating densities. We…
Sampling from distributions play a crucial role in aiding practitioners with statistical inference. However, in numerous situations, obtaining exact samples from complex distributions is infeasible. Consequently, researchers often turn to…
Many probabilistic models introduce strong dependencies between variables using a latent multivariate Gaussian distribution or a Gaussian process. We present a new Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm for performing inference in models with…
Many exact Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms have been developed for posterior inference in Bayesian nonparametric models which involve infinite-dimensional priors. However, these methods are not generic and special methodology must be…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are widely used to sample from complicated distributions, especially to sample from the posterior distribution in Bayesian inference. However, MCMC is not directly applicable when facing the doubly…
We propose a Monte Carlo sampler from the reverse diffusion process. Unlike the practice of diffusion models, where the intermediary updates -- the score functions -- are learned with a neural network, we transform the score matching…
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…