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We introduce a gradient-based learning method to automatically adapt Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) proposal distributions to intractable targets. We define a maximum entropy regularised objective function, referred to as generalised speed…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-01-07 Michalis K. Titsias , Petros Dellaportas

Many applications -- including power systems, robotics, and economics -- involve a dynamical system interacting with a stochastic and hard-to-model environment. We adopt a reinforcement learning approach to control such systems.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-26 Abed AlRahman Al Makdah , Oliver Kosut , Lalitha Sankar , Shaofeng Zou

Particle Markov chain Monte Carlo (PMCMC) is a systematic way of combining the two main tools used for Monte Carlo statistical inference: sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). We present a novel PMCMC algorithm…

Computation · Statistics 2014-09-17 Fredrik Lindsten , Michael I. Jordan , Thomas B. Schön

Probabilistic Computation Tree Logic (PCTL) is frequently used to formally specify control objectives such as probabilistic reachability and safety. In this work, we focus on model checking PCTL specifications statistically on Markov…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-23 Yu Wang , Nima Roohi , Matthew West , Mahesh Viswanathan , Geir E. Dullerud

Model predictive control (MPC) is widely used in process control due to its interpretability and ability to handle constraints. As a parametric policy in reinforcement learning (RL), MPC offers strong initial performance and low data…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-03 Dean Brandner , Sebastien Gros , Sergio Lucia

We provide performance guarantees for a variant of simulation-based policy iteration for controlling Markov decision processes that involves the use of stochastic approximation algorithms along with state-of-the-art techniques that are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-17 Anna Winnicki , R. Srikant

Reinforcement learning (RL) post-training is a dominant approach for improving the reasoning performance of large language models (LLMs), yet growing evidence suggests that its gains arise primarily from distribution sharpening rather than…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Xiaotong Ji , Rasul Tutunov , Matthieu Zimmer , Haitham Bou Ammar

In this paper we build on previous work which uses inferences techniques, in particular Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, to solve parameterized control problems. We propose a number of modifications in order to make this approach…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-05-14 Matthias Hoffman , Hendrik Kueck , Nando de Freitas , Arnaud Doucet

We introduce Projected Latent Markov Chain Monte Carlo (PL-MCMC), a technique for sampling from the high-dimensional conditional distributions learned by a normalizing flow. We prove that a Metropolis-Hastings implementation of PL-MCMC…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Chris Cannella , Mohammadreza Soltani , Vahid Tarokh

Many problems in the physical sciences, machine learning, and statistical inference necessitate sampling from a high-dimensional, multi-modal probability distribution. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, the ubiquitous tool for this…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2022-05-12 Marylou Gabrié , Grant M. Rotskoff , Eric Vanden-Eijnden

Sampling from complicated probability distributions is a hard computational problem arising in many fields, including statistical physics, optimization, and machine learning. Quantum computers have recently been used to sample from…

An efficient simulation-based methodology is proposed for the rolling window estimation of state space models, called particle rolling Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) with double block sampling. In our method, which is based on Sequential…

Computation · Statistics 2021-09-17 Naoki Awaya , Yasuhiro Omori

Maneuver decision-making can be regarded as a Markov decision process and can be address by reinforcement learning. However, original reinforcement learning algorithms can hardly solve the maneuvering decision-making problem. One reason is…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-09-19 Zhang Hong-Peng

Reinforcement learning constantly deals with hard integrals, for example when computing expectations in policy evaluation and policy iteration. These integrals are rarely analytically solvable and typically estimated with the Monte Carlo…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-23 Sebastien M. R. Arnold , Pierre L'Ecuyer , Liyu Chen , Yi-fan Chen , Fei Sha

Particle Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods are used to carry out inference in non-linear and non-Gaussian state space models, where the posterior density of the states is approximated using particles. Current approaches usually perform…

Computation · Statistics 2019-09-30 Eduardo F. Mendes , Christopher K. Carter , David Gunawan , Robert Kohn

Model-based Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a popular learning paradigm due to its potential sample efficiency compared to model-free RL. However, existing empirical model-based RL approaches lack the ability to explore. This work studies a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-16 Yuda Song , Wen Sun

Irreversible and rejection-free Monte Carlo methods, recently developed in Physics under the name Event-Chain and known in Statistics as Piecewise Deterministic Monte Carlo (PDMC), have proven to produce clear acceleration over standard…

Computation · Statistics 2020-04-28 Manon Michel , Alain Durmus , Stéphane Sénécal

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are often used for approximate inference inside learning, but their slow mixing can be difficult to diagnose and the approximations can seriously degrade learning. To alleviate these issues, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-02-25 Jacob Steinhardt , Percy Liang

Existing Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are either based on general-purpose and domain-agnostic schemes which can lead to slow convergence, or hand-crafting of problem-specific proposals by an expert. We propose A-NICE-MC, a novel…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-03-16 Jiaming Song , Shengjia Zhao , Stefano Ermon

We introduce interacting particle Markov chain Monte Carlo (iPMCMC), a PMCMC method based on an interacting pool of standard and conditional sequential Monte Carlo samplers. Like related methods, iPMCMC is a Markov chain Monte Carlo sampler…