Related papers: Variance reduction for Markov chains with applicat…

In this paper, we propose a variance reduction approach for Markov chains based on additive control variates and the minimization of an appropriate estimate for the asymptotic variance. We focus on the particular case when control variates…

In this paper we propose an efficient variance reduction approach for additive functionals of Markov chains relying on a novel discrete time martingale representation. Our approach is fully non-asymptotic and does not require the knowledge…

In this paper we propose a novel and practical variance reduction approach for additive functionals of dependent sequences. Our approach combines the use of control variates with the minimisation of an empirical variance estimate. We…

A new methodology is presented for the construction of control variates to reduce the variance of additive functionals of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) samplers. Our control variates are definedthrough the minimization of the asymptotic…

Interest is in evaluating, by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation, the expected value of a function with respect to a, possibly unnormalized, probability distribution. A general purpose variance reduction technique for the MCMC…

We consider the problem of estimating the asymptotic variance of a function defined on a Markov chain, an important step for statistical inference of the stationary mean. We design a novel recursive estimator that requires $O(1)$…

This paper addresses the key challenge of estimating the asymptotic covariance associated with the Markov chain central limit theorem, which is essential for visualizing and terminating Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations. We focus…

This paper proposes a new randomized strategy for adaptive MCMC using Bayesian optimization. This approach applies to non-differentiable objective functions and trades off exploration and exploitation to reduce the number of potentially…

Statistical inference methods are fundamentally important in machine learning. Most state-of-the-art inference algorithms are variants of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) or variational inference (VI). However, both methods struggle with…

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…

The asymptotic variance is an important criterion to evaluate the performance of Markov chains, especially for the central limit theorems. We give the variational formulas for the asymptotic variance of discrete-time (non-reversible) Markov…

We explore whether splitting and killing methods can improve the accuracy of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimates of rare event probabilities, and we make three contributions. First, we prove that "weighted ensemble" is the only…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a commonly used method for approximating expectations with respect to probability distributions. Uncertainty assessment for MCMC estimators is essential in practical applications. Moreover, for…

We present a new way of converting a reversible finite Markov chain into a non-reversible one, with a theoretical guarantee that the asymptotic variance of the MCMC estimator based on the non-reversible chain is reduced. The method is…

Markov chain Monte Carlo(MCMC) is a popular approach to sample from high dimensional distributions, and the asymptotic variance is a commonly used criterion to evaluate the performance. While most popular MCMC algorithms are reversible,…

I show how any reversible Markov chain on a finite state space that is irreducible, and hence suitable for estimating expectations with respect to its invariant distribution, can be used to construct a non-reversible Markov chain on a…

A general methodology is introduced for the construction and effective application of control variates to estimation problems involving data from reversible MCMC samplers. We propose the use of a specific class of functions as control…

We consider the efficient use of an approximation within Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), with subsequent importance sampling (IS) correction of the Markov chain inexact output, leading to asymptotically exact inference. We detail…

We introduce a new algorithm for approximate inference that combines reparametrization, Markov chain Monte Carlo and variational methods. We construct a very flexible implicit variational distribution synthesized by an arbitrary Markov…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are used to estimate features of interest of a distribution. The Monte Carlo error in estimation has an asymptotic normal distribution whose multivariate nature has so far been ignored in the MCMC…