Related papers: On the Metric-based Approximate Minimization of Ma…
Recent quasi-optimal error estimates for the finite element approximation of total-variation regularized minimization problems require the existence of a Lipschitz continuous dual solution. We discuss the validity of this condition and…
In this paper we consider the problem of computing the stationary distribution of nearly completely decomposable Markov processes, a well-established area in the classical theory of Markov processes with broad applications in the design,…
This work addresses the problem of estimating the parameters of the general half-normal distribution. Namely, the problem of determining the minimum risk equi\-va\-riant (MRE) estimators of the parameters is explored. Simulation studies are…
We study the Closest Pair Problem in Hamming metric, which asks to find the pair with the smallest Hamming distance in a collection of binary vectors. We give a new randomized algorithm for the problem on uniformly random input…
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…
Disjointly constrained multilinear programming concerns the problem of maximizing a multilinear function on the product of finitely many disjoint polyhedra. While maximizing a linear function on a polytope (linear programming) is known to…
Approximate Bayesian computation methods are useful for generative models with intractable likelihoods. These methods are however sensitive to the dimension of the parameter space, requiring exponentially increasing resources as this…
We study the following problem: Given a variable of interest, we would like to find a best linear predictor for it by choosing a subset of $k$ relevant variables obeying a matroid constraint. This problem is a natural generalization of…
We study the use of approximate Lagrange multipliers and discrete actions in solving convex optimisation problems. We observe that descent, which can be ensured using a wide range of approaches (gradient, subgradient, Newton, etc.), is…
A fundamental challenge in Bayesian inference is efficient representation of a target distribution. Many non-parametric approaches do so by sampling a large number of points using variants of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). We propose an…
We introduce a class of numerical schemes for optimal control problems based on a novel Markov chain approximation, which uses, in turn, a piecewise constant policy approximation, Euler-Maruyama time stepping, and a Gauss-Hermite…
In this paper, we propose a variance reduction approach for Markov chains based on additive control variates and the minimization of an appropriate estimate for the asymptotic variance. We focus on the particular case when control variates…
The paper addresses the problem of computing maximal conditional expected accumulated rewards until reaching a target state (briefly called maximal conditional expectations) in finite-state Markov decision processes where the condition is…
Bayesian inverse problems often involve sampling posterior distributions on infinite-dimensional function spaces. Traditional Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are characterized by deteriorating mixing times upon mesh-refinement,…
We consider the problem: is the optimal expected total reward to reach a goal state in a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) below a given threshold? We tackle this -- generally undecidable -- problem by computing…
In this article we consider Bayesian parameter inference associated to partially-observed stochastic processes that start from a set B0 and are stopped or killed at the first hitting time of a known set A. Such processes occur naturally…
This paper presents a detailed theoretical analysis of the three stochastic approximation proximal gradient algorithms proposed in our companion paper [49] to set regularization parameters by marginal maximum likelihood estimation. We prove…
The area of parameterized approximation seeks to combine approximation and parameterized algorithms to obtain, e.g., (1+eps)-approximations in f(k,eps)n^{O(1)} time where k is some parameter of the input. We obtain the following results on…
The bisimulation metric (BSM) is a powerful tool for analyzing state similarities within a Markov decision process (MDP), revealing that states closer in BSM have more similar optimal value functions. While BSM has been successfully…
Recently there is a large amount of work devoted to the study of Markov chain stochastic gradient methods (MC-SGMs) which mainly focus on their convergence analysis for solving minimization problems. In this paper, we provide a…