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The problem of optimising functions with intractable gradients frequently arise in machine learning and statistics, ranging from maximum marginal likelihood estimation procedures to fine-tuning of generative models. Stochastic approximation…
Probabilistic models are conceptually powerful tools for finding structure in data, but their practical effectiveness is often limited by our ability to perform inference in them. Exact inference is frequently intractable, so approximate…
The random numbers driving Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation are usually modeled as independent U(0,1) random variables. Tribble [Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms using completely uniformly distributed driving sequences (2007)…
The Partially Collapsed Gibbs (PCG) sampler offers a new strategy for improving the convergence of a Gibbs sampler. PCG achieves faster convergence by reducing the conditioning in some of the draws of its parent Gibbs sampler. Although this…
We consider conditional tests for non-negative discrete exponential families. We develop two Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms which allow us to sample from the conditional space and to perform approximated tests. The first…
Stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SGMCMC) is a popular class of algorithms for scalable Bayesian inference. However, these algorithms include hyperparameters such as step size or batch size that influence the accuracy of…
Stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SG-MCMC) has become increasingly popular for simulating posterior samples in large-scale Bayesian modeling. However, existing SG-MCMC schemes are not tailored to any specific probabilistic…
Markov chain Monte Carlo methods such as Gibbs sampling and simple forms of the Metropolis algorithm typically move about the distribution being sampled via a random walk. For the complex, high-dimensional distributions commonly encountered…
Monte Carlo sampling of the canonical distribution presents a formidable challenge when the potential energy landscape is characterized by a large number of local minima separated by high barriers. The principal observation of this work is…
Stochastic Gradient Descent with a constant learning rate (constant SGD) simulates a Markov chain with a stationary distribution. With this perspective, we derive several new results. (1) We show that constant SGD can be used as an…
We introduce a new Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach designed for efficient sampling of highly correlated and multimodal posteriors. Parallel tempering, though effective, is a costly technique for sampling such posteriors. Our…
We study statistical model checking of continuous-time stochastic hybrid systems. The challenge in applying statistical model checking to these systems is that one cannot simulate such systems exactly. We employ the multilevel Monte Carlo…
Bayesian inference in state-space models is challenging due to high-dimensional state trajectories. A viable approach is particle Markov chain Monte Carlo, combining MCMC and sequential Monte Carlo to form "exact approximations" to…
We introduce the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo Particle Swarm Optimizer (HMC-PSO), an optimization algorithm that reaps the benefits of both Exponentially Averaged Momentum PSO and HMC sampling. The coupling of the position and velocity of each…
We study a variation of vanilla stochastic gradient descent where the optimizer only has access to a Markovian sampling scheme. These schemes encompass applications that range from decentralized optimization with a random walker (token…
Investigating critical phenomena or phase transitions is of high interest in physics and chemistry, for which Monte Carlo (MC) simulations, a crucial tool for numerically analyzing macroscopic properties of given systems, are often hindered…
Deterministic-scan and random-scan component-wise Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms, such as Gibbs samplers and conditional Metropolis-Hastings, are popular approaches for sampling from multivariate distributions. A long-standing open…
Building on our previously introduced Multi-cell Monte Carlo (MC)^2 method for modeling phase coexistence, this paper provides important improvements for efficient determination of phase equilibria in solids. The (MC)^2 method uses multiple…
In general, the statistical simulation approaches are referred to as the Monte Carlo methods as a whole. The broad class of the Monte Carlo methods involves the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques that attract the attention of…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling methods are widely used but often encounter either slow convergence or biased sampling when applied to multimodal high dimensional distributions. In this paper, we present a general framework of…