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Parameter estimation for discretely observed Markov processes is a challenging problem. However, simulation of Markov processes is straightforward using the Gillespie algorithm. We exploit this ease of simulation to develop an effective…
Importance sampling has been known as a powerful tool to reduce the variance of Monte Carlo estimator for rare event simulation. Based on the criterion of minimizing the variance of Monte Carlo estimator within a parametric family, we…
We propose a sampling-based framework for finite-horizon trajectory and policy optimization under differentiable dynamics by casting controller design as inference. Specifically, we minimize a KL-regularized expected trajectory cost, which…
The Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) sampling algorithm exploits Hamiltonian dynamics to construct efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), which has become increasingly popular in machine learning and statistics. Since HMC uses the gradient…
State-space models are ubiquitous in the statistical literature since they provide a flexible and interpretable framework for analyzing many time series. In most practical applications, the state-space model is specified through a…
Conventional Monte Carlo simulations are stochastic in the sense that the acceptance of a trial move is decided by comparing a computed acceptance probability with a random number, uniformly distributed between 0 and 1. Here we consider the…
In this article we consider the approximation of expectations w.r.t. probability distributions associated to the solution of partial differential equations (PDEs); this scenario appears routinely in Bayesian inverse problems. In practice,…
Probabilistic modeling provides the capability to represent and manipulate uncertainty in data, models, predictions and decisions. We are concerned with the problem of learning probabilistic models of dynamical systems from measured data.…
For big data analysis, high computational cost for Bayesian methods often limits their applications in practice. In recent years, there have been many attempts to improve computational efficiency of Bayesian inference. Here we propose an…
Bayesian formulation of modern day signal processing problems has called for improved Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling algorithms for inference. The need for efficient sampling techniques has become indispensable for high…
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) sampling methods provide a mechanism for defining distant proposals with high acceptance probabilities in a Metropolis-Hastings framework, enabling more efficient exploration of the state space than standard…
Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is a well-established family of Monte Carlo methods for performing approximate Bayesian inference in the case where an ``implicit'' model is used for the data: when the data model can be simulated, but…
Bayesian inference for models that have an intractable partition function is known as a doubly intractable problem, where standard Monte Carlo methods are not applicable. The past decade has seen the development of auxiliary variable Monte…
Estimating risk measures such as large loss probabilities and Value-at-Risk is fundamental in financial risk management and often relies on computationally intensive nested Monte Carlo methods. While Multi-Level Monte Carlo (MLMC)…
In this work, we study the stochastic optimal control problem (SOC) mainly from the probabilistic view point, i.e. via the Stochastic Maximum principle (SMP) \cite{Peng4}. We adopt the sample-wise backpropagation scheme proposed in…
Given a real symmetric positive semi-definite matrix E, and an approximation S that is a sum of n independent matrix-valued random variables, we present bounds on the relative error in S due to randomization. The bounds do not depend on the…
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…
A key limitation of sampling algorithms for approximate inference is that it is difficult to quantify their approximation error. Widely used sampling schemes, such as sequential importance sampling with resampling and Metropolis-Hastings,…
The celebrated Monte Carlo method estimates an expensive-to-compute quantity by random sampling. Bandit-based Monte Carlo optimization is a general technique for computing the minimum of many such expensive-to-compute quantities by adaptive…
Annealed Sequential Monte Carlo (ASMC) samplers are special cases of SMC samplers where the sequence of distributions can be embedded in a smooth path of distributions. Using this underlying path and a performance model based on the…