Related papers: Rethinking the Effective Sample Size
Consider a central problem in randomized approximation schemes that use a Monte Carlo approach. Given a sequence of independent, identically distributed random variables $X_1,X_2,\ldots$ with mean $\mu$ and standard deviation at most $c…
Statistical model checking avoids the exponential growth of states associated with probabilistic model checking by estimating properties from multiple executions of a system and by giving results within confidence bounds. Rare properties…
We introduce zeus, a well-tested Python implementation of the Ensemble Slice Sampling (ESS) method for Bayesian parameter inference. ESS is a novel Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm specifically designed to tackle the computational…
We develop a theoretical framework for studying numerical estimation of lower previsions, generally applicable to two-level Monte Carlo methods, importance sampling methods, and a wide range of other sampling methods one might devise. We…
The goal of importance sampling is to estimate the expected value of a given function with respect to a probability measure $\nu$ using a random sample of size $n$ drawn from a different probability measure $\mu$. If the two measures $\mu$…
Importance sampling has become an important tool for the computation of tail-based risk measures. Since such quantities are often determined mainly by rare events standard Monte Carlo can be inefficient and importance sampling provides a…
In this paper we have considered the problem of estimating the population mean in systematic sampling using information on an auxiliary variable in presence of non response. Some modified ratio, product and difference type estimators in…
Subsampling is a general statistical method developed in the 1990s aimed at estimating the sampling distribution of a statistic $\hat \theta _n$ in order to conduct nonparametric inference such as the construction of confidence intervals…
The self-normalized importance sampling (SNIS) estimator is a Monte Carlo estimator widely used to approximate expectations in statistical signal processing and machine learning. The efficiency of SNIS depends on the choice of proposal, but…
State-space models have been used in many applications, including econometrics, engineering, medical research, etc. The maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) of the static parameter of general state-space models is not straightforward because…
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…
The design and complexity analysis of randomized coordinate descent methods, and in particular of variants which update a random subset (sampling) of coordinates in each iteration, depends on the notion of expected separable…
Sample size derivation is a crucial element of the planning phase of any confirmatory trial. A sample size is typically derived based on constraints on the maximal acceptable type I error rate and a minimal desired power. Here, power…
Importance sampling is often used in machine learning when training and testing data come from different distributions. In this paper we propose a new variant of importance sampling that can reduce the variance of importance sampling-based…
Evolution Strategies (ES) emerged as a scalable alternative to popular Reinforcement Learning (RL) techniques, providing an almost perfect speedup when distributed across hundreds of CPU cores thanks to a reduced communication overhead.…
Bayesian inference involves two main computational challenges. First, in estimating the parameters of some model for the data, the posterior distribution may well be highly multi-modal: a regime in which the convergence to stationarity of…
Slice sampling is a well-established Markov chain Monte Carlo method for (approximate) sampling of target distributions which are only known up to a normalizing constant. The method is based on choosing a new state on a slice, i.e., a…
In this review, we address the use of Monte Carlo methods for approximating definite integrals of the form $Z = \int L(x) d P(x)$, where $L$ is a target function (often a likelihood) and $P$ a finite measure. We present vertical-likelihood…
Simulated tempering (ST) is an established Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for sampling from a multimodal density $\pi(\theta)$. Typically, ST involves introducing an auxiliary variable $k$ taking values in a finite subset of $[0,1]$…
The Stochastic Approximation EM (SAEM) algorithm, a variant stochastic approximation of EM, is a versatile tool for inference in incomplete data models. In this paper, we review the fundamental EM algorithm and then focus especially on the…