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We propose a novel sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) method for sampling from unnormalized target distributions based on a reverse denoising diffusion process. While recent diffusion-based samplers simulate the reverse diffusion using…

Computation · Statistics 2025-11-06 Luhuan Wu , Yi Han , Christian A. Naesseth , John P. Cunningham

In this paper, we tackle the challenging task of unsupervised salient object detection (SOD) by leveraging spectral clustering on self-supervised features. We make the following contributions: (i) We revisit spectral clustering and…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2022-03-24 Gyungin Shin , Samuel Albanie , Weidi Xie

We derive and study SQMC (Sequential Quasi-Monte Carlo), a class of algorithms obtained by introducing QMC point sets in particle filtering. SQMC is related to, and may be seen as an extension of, the array-RQMC algorithm of L'Ecuyer et al.…

Computation · Statistics 2014-12-01 Mathieu Gerber , Nicolas Chopin

Training large language models (LLMs) with reinforcement learning (RL) methods such as PPO and GRPO commonly relies on ratio clipping to stabilise updates. While effective at preventing instability, clipping discards information, introduces…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Madeleine Dwyer , Adam Sobey , Adriane Chapman

The particle filter (PF), also known as sequential Monte Carlo (SMC), approximates high-dimensional probability distributions and their normalizing constants in the discrete-time setting. To reduce the variance of the Monte Carlo…

Computation · Statistics 2026-05-05 Jianfeng Lu , Yuliang Wang

We introduce a clipping strategy for Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) which uses quantiles of the gradient norm as clipping thresholds. We prove that this new strategy provides a robust and efficient optimization algorithm for smooth…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-10-15 Ibrahim Merad , Stéphane Gaïffas

Traditional approaches to portfolio optimization, often rooted in Modern Portfolio Theory and solved via quadratic programming or evolutionary algorithms, struggle with scalability or flexibility, especially in scenarios involving complex…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2025-07-23 Christian Oliva , Pedro R. Ventura , Luis F. Lago-Fernández

In this article we consider recursive approximations of the smoothing distribution associated to partially observed stochastic differential equations (SDEs), which are observed discretely in time. Such models appear in a wide variety of…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-05-15 Jeremie Houssineau , Ajay Jasra , Sumeetpal S. Singh

Gerber and Chopin (2015) recently introduced Sequential quasi-Monte Carlo (SQMC) algorithms as an efficient way to perform filtering in state-space models. The basic idea is to replace random variables with low-discrepancy point sets, so as…

Computation · Statistics 2015-06-22 Mathieu Gerber , Nicolas Chopin

In this work, the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm has been used to train various Variational Quantum Circuits (VQCs). This approach is motivated by the fact that commonly used gradient-based optimization methods can suffer from…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-09-22 Marco Mordacci , Michele Amoretti

We propose sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods for sampling the posterior distribution of state-space models under highly informative observation regimes, a situation in which standard SMC methods can perform poorly. A special case is…

Computation · Statistics 2015-07-10 Pierre Del Moral , Lawrence M. Murray

The sequential minimal optimization (SMO) algorithm and variants thereof are the de facto standard method for solving large quadratic programs for support vector machine (SVM) training. In this paper we propose a simple yet powerful…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-08-01 Tobias Glasmachers

Stochastic differential equations (SDEs) provide a flexible framework for modeling temporal dynamics in partially observed systems. A central task is to calibrate such models from data, which requires inferring latent trajectories and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-08 Yu Wang , Arnab Ganguly

Bayesian filtering aims at tracking sequentially a hidden process from an observed one. In particular, sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) techniques propagate in time weighted trajectories which represent the posterior probability density…

Computation · Statistics 2012-10-22 Yohan Petetin , François Desbouvries

A Support Vector Method for multivariate performance measures was recently introduced by Joachims (2005). The underlying optimization problem is currently solved using cutting plane methods such as SVM-Perf and BMRM. One can show that these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-02-20 Xinhua Zhang , Ankan Saha , S. V. N. Vishwanatan

Stochastic Gradient (SG) is the defacto iterative technique to solve stochastic optimization (SO) problems with a smooth (non-convex) objective $f$ and a stochastic first-order oracle. SG's attractiveness is due in part to its simplicity of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-08 David Newton , Raghu Bollapragada , Raghu Pasupathy , Nung Kwan Yip

Modern variable selection procedures make use of penalization methods to execute simultaneous model selection and estimation. A popular method is the LASSO (least absolute shrinkage and selection operator), the use of which requires…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-01-12 Meadhbh O'Neill , Kevin Burke

Improving sample efficiency has been a longstanding goal in reinforcement learning. This paper proposes $\mathtt{VRMPO}$ algorithm: a sample efficient policy gradient method with stochastic mirror descent. In $\mathtt{VRMPO}$, a novel…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-10 Long Yang , Yu Zhang , Gang Zheng , Qian Zheng , Pengfei Li , Jianhang Huang , Jun Wen , Gang Pan

This paper considers non-smooth optimization problems where we seek to minimize the pointwise maximum of a continuously parameterized family of functions. Since the objective function is given as the solution to a maximization problem,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-12 Dimitris Boskos , Jorge Cortés , Sonia Martínez

This paper studies the addition of linear constraints to the Support Vector Regression (SVR) when the kernel is linear. Adding those constraints into the problem allows to add prior knowledge on the estimator obtained, such as finding…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-11-07 Quentin Klopfenstein , Samuel Vaiter