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Monte Carlo (MC) sampling algorithms are an extremely widely-used technique to estimate expectations of functions f(x), especially in high dimensions. Control variates are a very powerful technique to reduce the error of such estimates, but…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are algorithms for sampling probability distributions, commonly applied to the Boltzmann distribution in physical and chemical models such as protein folding and the Ising model. These methods enable…

Markov chain Monte Carlo is a method of producing a correlated sample in order to estimate features of a target distribution via ergodic averages. A fundamental question is when should sampling stop? That is, when are the ergodic averages…

This paper considers a new approach to using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) in contexts where one may adopt multilevel (ML) Monte Carlo. The underlying problem is to approximate expectations w.r.t. an underlying probability measure that is…

We propose a new class of learning algorithms that combines variational approximation and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation. Naive algorithms that use the variational approximation as proposal distribution can perform poorly…

We propose a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm based on Gibbs sampling with parallel tempering to solve nonlinear optimal control problems. The algorithm is applicable to nonlinear systems with dynamics that can be approximately…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are a powerful tool for computation with complex probability distributions. However the performance of such methods is critically dependant on properly tuned parameters, most of which are difficult if…

An introduction to the use of linchpin variables in Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is provided. Before the widespread adoption of MCMC methods, conditional sampling using linchpin variables was essentially the only practical approach for…

The problem of sampling constrained continuous distributions has frequently appeared in many machine/statistical learning models. Many Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) sampling methods have been adapted to handle different types of…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods asymptotically sample from complex probability distributions. The pseudo-marginal MCMC framework only requires an unbiased estimator of the unnormalized probability distribution function to construct…

Monte Carlo integration with variance reduction by means of control variates can be implemented by the ordinary least squares estimator for the intercept in a multiple linear regression model with the integrand as response and the control…

To sample from a given target distribution, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling relies on constructing an ergodic Markov chain with the target distribution as its invariant measure. For any MCMC method, an important question is how to…

We estimate the parameter of a stationary time series process by minimizing the integrated weighted mean squared error between the empirical and simulated characteristic function, when the true characteristic functions cannot be explicitly…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations are commonly employed for estimating features of a target distribution, particularly for Bayesian inference. A fundamental challenge is determining when these simulations should stop. We consider…

Estimating the transition dynamics of controlled Markov chains is crucial in fields such as time series analysis, reinforcement learning, and system exploration. Traditional non-parametric density estimation methods often assume independent…

Approximate Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) offers the promise of more rapid sampling at the cost of more biased inference. Since standard MCMC diagnostics fail to detect these biases, researchers have developed computable Stein discrepancy…

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a powerful Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm for estimating expectations with respect to continuous un-normalized probability distributions. MCMC estimators typically have higher variance than…

In this paper we present a novel approach towards variance reduction for discretised diffusion processes. The proposed approach involves specially constructed control variates and allows for a significant reduction in the variance for the…

In the thesis we take the split chain approach to analyzing Markov chains and use it to establish fixed-width results for estimators obtained via Markov chain Monte Carlo procedures (MCMC). Theoretical results include necessary and…

Inference after model selection presents computational challenges when dealing with intractable conditional distributions. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a common method for sampling from these distributions, but its slow convergence…