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Related papers: Sampling as optimization in the space of measures:…

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In order to solve tasks like uncertainty quantification or hypothesis tests in Bayesian imaging inverse problems, we often have to draw samples from the arising posterior distribution. For the usually log-concave but high-dimensional…

Computation · Statistics 2025-01-23 Matthias J. Ehrhardt , Lorenz Kuger , Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb

Understanding the dimension dependency of computational complexity in high-dimensional sampling problem is a fundamental problem, both from a practical and theoretical perspective. Compared with samplers with unbiased stationary…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Xunpeng Huang , Hanze Dong , Difan Zou , Tong Zhang

In this paper we introduce and analyse Langevin samplers that consist of perturbations of the standard underdamped Langevin dynamics. The perturbed dynamics is such that its invariant measure is the same as that of the unperturbed dynamics.…

Probability · Mathematics 2017-12-06 A. B. Duncan , N. Nuesken , G. A. Pavliotis

Geometric tempering is a popular approach to sampling from challenging multi-modal probability distributions by instead sampling from a sequence of distributions which interpolate, using the geometric mean, between an easier proposal…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-04-09 Omar Chehab , Anna Korba , Austin Stromme , Adrien Vacher

Standard first-order Langevin algorithms such as the unadjusted Langevin algorithm (ULA) are obtained by discretizing the Langevin diffusion and are widely used for sampling in machine learning because they scale to high dimensions and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-09-25 Mert Gurbuzbalaban , Hoang M. Nguyen , Xicheng Zhang , Lingjiong Zhu

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

Adaptive or dynamic signal sampling in sensing systems can adapt subsequent sampling strategies based on acquired signals, thereby potentially improving image quality and speed. This paper proposes a Bayesian method for adaptive sampling…

Signal Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-02-28 Guanhua Wang , Douglas C. Noll , Jeffrey A. Fessler

The modified Method of Successive Approximations (MSA) is an iterative scheme for approximating solutions to stochastic control problems in continuous time based on Pontryagin Optimality Principle which, starting with an initial open loop…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-10-10 Deven Sethi , David Šiška

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

Sampling a probability distribution with an unknown normalization constant is a fundamental problem in computational science and engineering. This task may be cast as an optimization problem over all probability measures, and an initial…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-09-12 Yifan Chen , Daniel Zhengyu Huang , Jiaoyang Huang , Sebastian Reich , Andrew M. Stuart

The classical (overdamped) Langevin dynamics provide a natural algorithm for sampling from its invariant measure, which uniquely minimizes an energy functional over the space of probability measures, and which concentrates around the…

Probability · Mathematics 2023-09-26 Giovanni Conforti , Daniel Lacker , Soumik Pal

The primary goal of this paper is to provide an efficient solution algorithm based on the augmented Lagrangian framework for optimization problems with a stochastic objective function and deterministic constraints. Our main contribution is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-29 Raghu Bollapragada , Cem Karamanli , Brendan Keith , Boyan Lazarov , Socratis Petrides , Jingyi Wang

This work explores a novel perspective on solving nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems by leveraging sampling based methods. Instead of treating the objective function purely through traditional (often deterministic) optimization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-21 Nahom Seyoum , Haoxiang You

This work proposes a simple yet effective sampling framework for combinatorial optimization (CO). Our method builds on discrete Langevin dynamics (LD), an efficient gradient-guided generative paradigm. However, we observe that directly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-22 Shengyu Feng , Yiming Yang

In this paper we propose a new approach for sampling from probability measures in, possibly, high dimensional spaces. By perturbing the standard overdamped Langevin dynamics by a suitable Stratonovich perturbation that preserves the…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2019-04-23 Assyr Abdulle , Grigorios A. Pavliotis , Gilles Vilmart

Sampling from discrete distributions is a ubiquitous task in machine learning, recently revisited by the emergence of discrete diffusion models. While Langevin algorithms constitute the state of the art for continuous spaces, discrete…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-02-18 Armand Gissler , Saeed Saremi , Francis Bach

We establish sample complexity guarantees for estimating the covariance matrix of a strongly log-concave smooth distribution using the unadjusted Langevin algorithm (ULA). We quantitatively compare our complexity estimates on single-chain…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-02-16 Shogo Nakakita

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 introduce a novel and efficient algorithm called the stochastic approximate gradient descent (SAGD), as an alternative to the stochastic gradient descent for cases where unbiased stochastic gradients cannot be trivially obtained.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-14 Yixuan Qiu , Xiao Wang

We study the Riemannian Langevin Algorithm for the problem of sampling from a distribution with density $\nu$ with respect to the natural measure on a manifold with metric $g$. We assume that the target density satisfies a log-Sobolev…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-25 Khashayar Gatmiry , Santosh S. Vempala