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Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC for short) is a family of computational techniques which offer an almost automated solution in situations where evaluation of the posterior likelihood is computationally prohibitive, or whenever…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2013-06-04 Gérard Biau , Frédéric Cérou , Arnaud Guyader

Bayesian inference with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is challenging when the likelihood function is irregular and expensive to compute. We explore several sampling algorithms that make use of subset evaluations to reduce computational…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-16 Conor Rosato , Harvinder Lehal , Simon Maskell , Lee Devlin , Malcolm Strens

Likelihood-free methods, such as approximate Bayesian computation, are powerful tools for practical inference problems with intractable likelihood functions. Markov chain Monte Carlo and sequential Monte Carlo variants of approximate…

Computation · Statistics 2019-02-26 David J. Warne , Ruth E. Baker , Matthew J. Simpson

Bayesian synthetic likelihood (BSL) is now an established method for conducting approximate Bayesian inference in models where, due to the intractability of the likelihood function, exact Bayesian approaches are either infeasible or…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-06-12 David T. Frazier , Christopher Drovandi

Composite likelihood provides approximate inference when the full likelihood is intractable and sub-likelihood functions of marginal events can be evaluated relatively easily. It has been successfully applied for many complex models.…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-09-05 Wentao Li , Rosabeth White , Dennis Prangle

Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) methods are used to approximate posterior distributions in models with unknown or computationally intractable likelihoods. Both the accuracy and computational efficiency of ABC depend on the choice of…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-03-17 Bai Jiang , Tung-yu Wu , Charles Zheng , Wing H. Wong

There is an increasing amount of literature focused on Bayesian computational methods to address problems with intractable likelihood. One approach is a set of algorithms known as Approximate Bayesian Computational (ABC) methods. One of the…

Methodology · Statistics 2015-10-27 Weixuan Zhu , Juan Miguel Marin , Fabrizio Leisen

Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is a simulation-based likelihood-free method applicable to both model selection and parameter estimation. ABC parameter estimation requires the ability to forward simulate datasets from a candidate…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-11-10 Louis Raynal , Sixing Chen , Antonietta Mira , Jukka-Pekka Onnela

Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) is a statistical learning technique to calibrate and select models by comparing observed data to simulated data. This technique bypasses the use of the likelihood and requires only the ability to…

Computation · Statistics 2021-05-04 Pierre-Olivier Goffard , Patrick J. Laub

Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is one of the most popular "likelihood-free" methods. These methods have been applied in a wide range of fields by providing solutions to intractable likelihood problems in which exact Bayesian…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-04-08 Chaya Weerasinghe , David T. Frazier , Ruben Loaiza-Maya , Christopher Drovandi

Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) methods have become essential tools for performing inference when likelihood functions are intractable or computationally prohibitive. However, their scalability remains a major challenge in…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-07-09 Antoine Luciano , Charly Andral , Christian P. Robert , Robin J. Ryder

Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is a popular technique for approximating likelihoods and is often used in parameter estimation when the likelihood functions are analytically intractable. Although the use of ABC is widespread in many…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2011-03-29 Thomas A. Dean , Sumeetpal S. Singh , Ajay Jasra , Gareth W. Peters

Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) has gained popularity in recent years owing to its easy implementation, nice interpretation and good performance. Its advantages are more visible when one encounters complex models where maximum…

Computation · Statistics 2016-08-19 Xiaolong Zhong , Malay Ghosh

Models defined by stochastic differential equations (SDEs) allow for the representation of random variability in dynamical systems. The relevance of this class of models is growing in many applied research areas and is already a standard…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-08-06 Umberto Picchini

In the following article we consider approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) inference. We introduce a method for numerically approximating ABC posteriors using the multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC). A sequential Monte Carlo version of the…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-02-14 Ajay Jasra , Seongil Jo , David Nott , Christine Shoemaker , Raul Tempone

We consider a method for approximate inference in hidden Markov models (HMMs). The method circumvents the need to evaluate conditional densities of observations given the hidden states. It may be considered an instance of Approximate…

Computation · Statistics 2012-06-25 James S. Martin , Ajay Jasra , Sumeetpal S. Singh , Nick Whiteley , Emma McCoy

Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) methods are used to approximate posterior distributions using simulation rather than likelihood calculations. We introduce Gaussian process (GP) accelerated ABC, which we show can significantly reduce…

Computation · Statistics 2014-02-25 Richard D Wilkinson

This paper is on Bayesian inference for parametric statistical models that are defined by a stochastic simulator which specifies how data is generated. Exact sampling is then possible but evaluating the likelihood function is typically…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-03-02 Borislav Ikonomov , Michael U. Gutmann

Complicated generative models often result in a situation where computing the likelihood of observed data is intractable, while simulating from the conditional density given a parameter value is relatively easy. Approximate Bayesian…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-12-29 Mijung Park , Wittawat Jitkrittum , Dino Sejdinovic

Bayesian synthetic likelihood (BSL) is a popular method for performing approximate Bayesian inference when the likelihood function is intractable. In synthetic likelihood methods, the likelihood function is approximated parametrically via…

Computation · Statistics 2020-07-06 Jacob W. Priddle , Christopher Drovandi