Related papers: A Backward Simulation Method for Stochastic Optima…

This paper investigates methods for estimating the optimal stochastic control policy for a Markov Decision Process with unknown transition dynamics and an unknown reward function. This form of model-free reinforcement learning comprises…

We introduce a powerful and flexible MCMC algorithm for stochastic simulation. The method builds on a pseudo-marginal method originally introduced in [Genetics 164 (2003) 1139--1160], showing how algorithms which are approximations to an…

Stochastic approximation methods play a central role in maximum likelihood estimation problems involving intractable likelihood functions, such as marginal likelihoods arising in problems with missing or incomplete data, and in parametric…

We propose a sequential Markov chain Monte Carlo (SMCMC) algorithm to sample from a sequence of probability distributions, corresponding to posterior distributions at different times in on-line applications. SMCMC proceeds as in usual MCMC…

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 financial engineering, prices of financial products are computed approximately many times each trading day with (slightly) different parameters in each calculation. In many financial models such prices can be approximated by means of…

Model comparison for the purposes of selection, averaging and validation is a problem found throughout statistics. Within the Bayesian paradigm, these problems all require the calculation of the posterior probabilities of models within a…

We design and implement a novel algorithm for computing a multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) estimator of the cumulative distribution function of a quantity of interest in problems with random input parameters or initial conditions. Our approach…

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm to solve the Inverse Stochastic Optimal Control (ISOC) problem of the linear-quadratic sensorimotor (LQS) control model. The LQS model represents the current state-of-the-art in describing…

Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods are not only a popular tool in the analysis of state space models, but offer an alternative to MCMC in situations where Bayesian inference must proceed via simulation. This paper introduces a new SMC…

Stochastic approximation Monte Carlo (SAMC) has recently been proposed by Liang, Liu and Carroll [J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 102 (2007) 305--320] as a general simulation and optimization algorithm. In this paper, we propose to improve its…

Stochastic PDE eigenvalue problems are useful models for quantifying the uncertainty in several applications from the physical sciences and engineering, e.g., structural vibration analysis, the criticality of a nuclear reactor or photonic…

We introduce methodology for real-time inference in general-state-space hidden Markov models. Specifically, we extend recent advances in controlled sequential Monte Carlo (CSMC) methods-originally proposed for offline smoothing-to the…

Stochastic PDE eigenvalue problems often arise in the field of uncertainty quantification, whereby one seeks to quantify the uncertainty in an eigenvalue, or its eigenfunction. In this paper we present an efficient multilevel quasi-Monte…

We describe an adaptive importance sampling algorithm for rare events that is based on a dual stochastic control formulation of a path sampling problem. Specifically, we focus on path functionals that have the form of cumulate generating…

We consider stochastic optimization when one only has access to biased stochastic oracles of the objective and the gradient, and obtaining stochastic gradients with low biases comes at high costs. This setting captures various optimization…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) requires to evaluate the full data likelihood at different parameter values iteratively and is often computationally infeasible for large data sets. In this paper, we propose to approximate the log-likelihood…

In many hierarchical inverse problems, not only do we want to estimate high- or infinite-dimensional model parameters in the parameter-to-observable maps, but we also have to estimate hyperparameters that represent critical assumptions in…

This paper investigates a linear quadratic stochastic optimal control (LQSOC) problem with partial information. Firstly, by introducing two Riccati equations and a backward stochastic differential equation (BSDE), we solve this LQSOC…

This article presents a stochastic framework to quantify the biometric risk of an insurance portfolio in solvency regimes such as Solvency II or the Swiss Solvency Test (SST). The main difficulty in this context constitutes in the proper…