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Variational inference in Bayesian deep learning often involves computing the gradient of an expectation that lacks a closed-form solution. In these cases, pathwise and score-function gradient estimators are the most common approaches. The…
We study the computational complexity of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for high-dimensional Bayesian linear regression under sparsity constraints. We first show that a Bayesian approach can achieve variable-selection consistency…
The recently proposed L-lag coupling for unbiased Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) calls for a joint celebration by MCMC practitioners and theoreticians. For practitioners, it circumvents the thorny issue of deciding the burn-in period or…
In this article we consider importance sampling (IS) and sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods in the context of 1-dimensional random walks with absorbing barriers. In particular, we develop a very precise variance analysis for several IS…
In this contribution, we propose a new computationally efficient method to combine Variational Inference (VI) with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). This approach can be used with generic MCMC kernels, but is especially well suited to…
In this paper we examine a control variate estimator for a quantity that can be expressed as the expectation of a functional of a random process, that is itself the solution of a differential equation driven by fast mean-reverting ergodic…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) provides a feasible method for inferring Hidden Markov models, however, it is often computationally prohibitive, especially constrained by the curse of dimensionality, as the Monte Carlo sampler traverses…
Policy gradient methods have demonstrated success in reinforcement learning tasks that have high-dimensional continuous state and action spaces. However, policy gradient methods are also notoriously sample inefficient. This can be…
In the design of efficient simulation algorithms, one is often beset with a poor choice of proposal distributions. Although the performance of a given simulation kernel can clarify a posteriori how adequate this kernel is for the problem at…
The Multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) method has been applied successfully in a wide range of settings since its first introduction by Giles (2008). When using only two levels, the method can be viewed as a kind of control-variate approach to…
We propose neural control variates (NCV) for unbiased variance reduction in parametric Monte Carlo integration. So far, the core challenge of applying the method of control variates has been finding a good approximation of the integrand…
Adaptive and interacting Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms (MCMC) have been recently introduced in the literature. These novel simulation algorithms are designed to increase the simulation efficiency to sample complex distributions.…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for sampling probability density functions (combined with abundant computational resources) have transformed the sciences, especially in performing probabilistic inferences, or fitting models to data.…
The numerical approximation of posterior expected quantities of interest is considered. A novel control variate technique is proposed for post-processing of Markov chain Monte Carlo output, based both on Stein's method and an approach to…
Identifying important features linked to a response variable is a fundamental task in various scientific domains. This article explores statistical inference for simulated Markov random fields in high-dimensional settings. We introduce a…
We present a new framework to derandomise certain Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. As in MCMC, we first reduce counting problems to sampling from a sequence of marginal distributions. For the latter task, we introduce a method…
Most expressive variational families -- such as normalizing flows -- lack practical convergence guarantees, as their theoretical assurances typically hold only at the intractable global optimum. In this work, we present a general recipe for…
Recent advances in machine learning have led to the development of new methods for enhancing Monte Carlo methods such as Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and importance sampling (IS). One such method is normalizing flows, which use a neural…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods generate samples that are asymptotically distributed from a target distribution of interest as the number of iterations goes to infinity. Various theoretical results provide upper bounds on the…
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…