Related papers: A differential algebra based importance sampling m…
We deliver a call to arms for probabilistic numerical methods: algorithms for numerical tasks, including linear algebra, integration, optimization and solving differential equations, that return uncertainties in their calculations. Such…
The goal of this paper is to develop provably efficient importance sampling Monte Carlo methods for the estimation of rare events within the class of linear stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs). We find that if a spectral gap…
Given $iid$ observations from an unknown absolute continuous distribution defined on some domain $\Omega$, we propose a nonparametric method to learn a piecewise constant function to approximate the underlying probability density function.…
This paper describes a recursive estimation procedure for multivariate binary densities (probability distributions of vectors of Bernoulli random variables) using orthogonal expansions. For $d$ covariates, there are $2^d$ basis coefficients…
Estimating the probability of failures or accidents with aerospace systems is often necessary when new concepts or designs are introduced, as it is being done for Autonomous Aircraft. If the design is safe, as it is supposed to be, accident…
This paper addresses the problem of Monte Carlo approximation of posterior probability distributions. In particular, we have considered a recently proposed technique known as population Monte Carlo (PMC), which is based on an iterative…
Through the Bayesian lens of data assimilation, uncertainty on model parameters is traditionally quantified through the posterior covariance matrix. However, in modern settings involving high-dimensional and computationally expensive…
We present two analytical formulae for estimating the sensitivity -- namely, the gradient or Jacobian -- at given realizations of an arbitrary-dimensional random vector with respect to its distributional parameters. The first formula…
We present an efficient procedure for computing resonances and resonant modes of Helmholtz problems posed in exterior domains. The problem is formulated as a nonlinear eigenvalue problem (NEP), where the nonlinearity arises from the use of…
This paper presents a tool for addressing a key component in many algorithms for planning robot trajectories under uncertainty: evaluation of the safety of a robot whose actions are governed by a closed-loop feedback policy near a nominal…
The ratio between the probability that two distributions $R$ and $P$ give to points $x$ are known as importance weights or propensity scores and play a fundamental role in many different fields, most notably, statistics and machine…
Monte Carlo methods represent the "de facto" standard for approximating complicated integrals involving multidimensional target distributions. In order to generate random realizations from the target distribution, Monte Carlo techniques use…
The interest in the problem of small asteroids observed shortly before a deep close approach or an impact with the Earth has grown a lot in recent years. Since the observational dataset of such objects is very limited, they deserve…
We aim at providing a preliminary approach on the dynamics of a spacecraft in orbit about the asteroid (99942) Apophis during its Earth close approach. The physical properties from the polyhedral shape of the target are derived assigning…
Rare event probability estimation is an important topic in reliability analysis. Stochastic methods, such as importance sampling, have been developed to estimate such probabilities but they often fail in high dimension. In this paper, we…
Increased access to computing resources has led to the development of algorithms that can run efficiently on multi-core processing units or in distributed computing environments. In the context of Bayesian inference, many parallel computing…
This work introduces a new approximate proximal sampler that operates solely with zeroth-order information of the potential function. Prior theoretical analyses have revealed that proximal sampling corresponds to alternating forward and…
We present a new method for conducting Monte Carlo inference in graphical models which combines explicit search with generalized importance sampling. The idea is to reduce the variance of importance sampling by searching for significant…
This paper introduces a new technique for learning probabilistic models of mass and friction distributions of unknown objects, and performing robust sliding actions by using the learned models. The proposed method is executed in two…
In order to develop a differential calculus for error propagation we study local Dirichlet forms on probability spaces with square field operator $\Gamma$ -- i.e. error structures -- and we are looking for an object related to $\Gamma$…