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We propose novel scale-invariant error estimators for the Monte Carlo and multilevel Monte Carlo estimation of mean and variance. For any linear transformation of the distribution of the quantity of interest, the computation cost across…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-12-09 Sharana Kumar Shivanand , Bojana Rosić

Given a smooth function $f$, we develop a general approach to turn Monte Carlo samples with expectation $m$ into an unbiased estimate of $f(m)$. Specifically, we develop estimators that are based on randomly truncating the Taylor series…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-04-01 Nicolas Chopin , Francesca R. Crucinio , Sumeetpal S. Singh

In this paper, we propose a new stochastic optimization algorithm for Bayesian inference based on multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) methods. In Bayesian statistics, biased estimators of the model evidence have been often used as stochastic…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-26 Kei Ishikawa , Takashi Goda

Many problems in machine learning and statistics involve nested expectations and thus do not permit conventional Monte Carlo (MC) estimation. For such problems, one must nest estimators, such that terms in an outer estimator themselves…

Computation · Statistics 2018-05-24 Tom Rainforth , Robert Cornish , Hongseok Yang , Andrew Warrington , Frank Wood

We analyse a multilevel Monte Carlo method for the approximation of distribution functions of univariate random variables. Since, by assumption, the target distribution is not known explicitly, approximations have to be used. We provide an…

Probability · Mathematics 2017-06-22 Mike B. Giles , Tigran Nagapetyan , Klaus Ritter

We study an unbiased estimator for the density of a sum of random variables that are simulated from a computer model. A numerical study on examples with copula dependence is conducted where the proposed estimator performs favourably in…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2018-09-19 Patrick J. Laub , Robert Salomone , Zdravko I. Botev

Performing numerical integration when the integrand itself cannot be evaluated point-wise is a challenging task that arises in statistical analysis, notably in Bayesian inference for models with intractable likelihood functions. Markov…

Computation · Statistics 2020-06-17 Lawrence Middleton , George Deligiannidis , Arnaud Doucet , Pierre E. Jacob

We present novel Monte Carlo (MC) and multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) methods to determine the unbiased covariance of random variables using h-statistics. The advantage of this procedure lies in the unbiased construction of the estimator's…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-05-09 Sharana Kumar Shivanand

We introduce a new class of Monte Carlo based approximations of expectations of random variables such that their laws are only available via certain discretizations. Sampling from the discretized versions of these laws can typically…

Computation · Statistics 2017-10-17 Dan Crisan , Pierre Del Moral , Jeremie Houssineau , Ajay Jasra

In this paper, we introduce a new approach to constructing unbiased estimators when computing expectations of path functionals associated with stochastic differential equations (SDEs). Our randomization idea is closely related to…

Computational Finance · Quantitative Finance 2012-07-11 Chang-han Rhee , Peter W. Glynn

We develop new unbiased estimators of a number of quantities defined for functions of conditional moments, like conditional expectations and variances, of functions of two independent random variables given the first variable, including…

Computation · Statistics 2013-10-03 Tomasz Badowski

This article considers the sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) approximation of ratios of normalizing constants associated to posterior distributions which in principle rely on continuum models. Therefore, the Monte Carlo estimation error and the…

Computation · Statistics 2016-03-04 Pierre Del Moral , Ajay Jasra , Kody Law , Yan Zhou

We show how to extend a recently proposed multi-level Monte Carlo approach to the continuous time Markov chain setting, thereby greatly lowering the computational complexity needed to compute expected values of functions of the state of the…

Probability · Mathematics 2011-11-23 David F. Anderson , Desmond J. Higham

In this paper, we examine the Sample Average Approximation (SAA) procedure within a framework where the Monte Carlo estimator of the expectation is biased. We also introduce Multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) in the SAA setup to enhance the…

Computational Finance · Quantitative Finance 2024-07-29 Devang Sinha , Siddhartha P. Chakrabarty

We consider quantile estimation using Markov chain Monte Carlo and establish conditions under which the sampling distribution of the Monte Carlo error is approximately Normal. Further, we investigate techniques to estimate the associated…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2018-04-20 Charles Doss , James M. Flegal , Galin L. Jones , Ronald C. Neath

We describe and analyze some Monte Carlo methods for manifolds in Euclidean space defined by equality and inequality constraints. First, we give an MCMC sampler for probability distributions defined by un-normalized densities on such…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2017-09-21 Emilio Zappa , Miranda Holmes-Cerfon , Jonathan Goodman

We describe Monte Carlo approximation to the maximum likelihood estimator in models with intractable norming constants and explanatory variables. We consider both sources of randomness (due to the initial sample and to Monte Carlo…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-12-08 Blazej Miasojedow , Wojciech Niemiro , Jan Palczewski , Wojciech Rejchel

Recent progress in deep latent variable models has largely been driven by the development of flexible and scalable variational inference methods. Variational training of this type involves maximizing a lower bound on the log-likelihood,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-06-02 Andriy Mnih , Danilo J. Rezende

In this paper we propose an efficient stochastic optimization algorithm to search for Bayesian experimental designs such that the expected information gain is maximized. The gradient of the expected information gain with respect to…

Computation · Statistics 2022-02-03 Takashi Goda , Tomohiko Hironaka , Wataru Kitade , Adam Foster

In this short note we provide an unbiased multilevel Monte Carlo estimator of the log marginal likelihood and discuss its application to variational Bayes.

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-12-24 Takashi Goda , Kei Ishikawa