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One of the key challenges in identifying nonlinear and possibly non-Gaussian state space models (SSMs) is the intractability of estimating the system state. Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods, such as the particle filter (introduced more…

Probabilistic Logic Programming is an effective formalism for encoding problems characterized by uncertainty. Some of these problems may require the optimization of probability values subject to constraints among probability distributions…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-06-22 Damiano Azzolini , Fabrizio Riguzzi

The handling of probabilities in the form of uncertainty or partial information is an essential task for LLMs in many settings and applications. A common approach to evaluate an LLM's probabilistic reasoning capabilities is to assess its…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Manuel Mondal , Ljiljana Dolamic , Gérôme Bovet , Philippe Cudré-Mauroux , Julien Audiffren

Random sampling of graph partitions under constraints has become a popular tool for evaluating legislative redistricting plans. Analysts detect partisan gerrymandering by comparing a proposed redistricting plan with an ensemble of sampled…

Applications · Statistics 2023-11-09 Cory McCartan , Kosuke Imai

We introduce the sequential neural posterior and likelihood approximation (SNPLA) algorithm. SNPLA is a normalizing flows-based algorithm for inference in implicit models, and therefore is a simulation-based inference method that only…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-06-08 Samuel Wiqvist , Jes Frellsen , Umberto Picchini

Advanced probabilistic programming languages (PPLs) using hybrid particle filtering combine symbolic exact inference and Monte Carlo methods to improve inference performance. These systems use heuristics to partition random variables within…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2024-12-17 Ellie Y. Cheng , Eric Atkinson , Guillaume Baudart , Louis Mandel , Michael Carbin

Probabilistic Computation Tree Logic (PCTL) is frequently used to formally specify control objectives such as probabilistic reachability and safety. In this work, we focus on model checking PCTL specifications statistically on Markov…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-23 Yu Wang , Nima Roohi , Matthew West , Mahesh Viswanathan , Geir E. Dullerud

Pricing options is an important problem in financial engineering. In many scenarios of practical interest, financial option prices associated to an underlying asset reduces to computing an expectation w.r.t.~a diffusion process. In general,…

Computation · Statistics 2016-08-12 Deborshee Sen , Ajay Jasra , Yan Zhou

Bayesian inference for Markov processes has become increasingly relevant in recent years. Problems of this type often have intractable likelihoods and prior knowledge about model rate parameters is often poor. Markov Chain Monte Carlo…

Computation · Statistics 2014-10-23 Jamie Owen , Darren J. Wilkinson , Colin S. Gillespie

Probabilistic programming languages (PPLs) are an expressive and intuitive means of representing complex probability distributions. In that realm, languages like Dice target an important class of probabilistic programs: those whose…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-02-24 Tobias Gürtler , Benjamin Lucien Kaminski

Probabilistic programs are typically normal-looking programs describing posterior probability distributions. They intrinsically code up randomized algorithms and have long been at the heart of modern machine learning and approximate…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2023-02-14 Lutz Klinkenberg , Tobias Winkler , Mingshuai Chen , Joost-Pieter Katoen

Inference algorithms in probabilistic programming languages (PPLs) can be thought of as interpreters, since an inference algorithm traverses a model given evidence to answer a query. As with interpreters, we can improve the efficiency of…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2016-04-19 Rohin Shah , Emina Torlak , Rastislav Bodik

LLM-driven program evolution has emerged as a powerful tool for automated scientific discovery, yet existing frameworks offer no principled guide for designing their individual components and provide no guarantee that the search converges.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Jiachen Jiang , Huminhao Zhu , Zhihui Zhu

Statistical inference in evolutionary models with site-dependence is a long-standing challenge in phylogenetics and computational biology. We consider the problem of approximating marginal sequence likelihoods under dependent-site models of…

Computation · Statistics 2025-11-12 Joseph Mathews , Scott C. Schmidler

Probabilistic prediction of sequences from images and other high-dimensional data is a key challenge, particularly in risk-sensitive applications. In these settings, it is often desirable to quantify the uncertainty associated with the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-31 Qidong Yang , Weicheng Zhu , Joseph Keslin , Laure Zanna , Tim G. J. Rudner , Carlos Fernandez-Granda

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are generally regarded as the gold standard technique for Bayesian inference. They are theoretically well-understood and conceptually simple to apply in practice. The drawback of MCMC is that in…

Computation · Statistics 2019-07-17 Christopher Nemeth , Paul Fearnhead

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are based on the construction of a Markov chain with transition probabilities leaving invariant a probability distribution of interest. In this work, we look at these transition probabilities as…

Probability · Mathematics 2024-10-01 Rocco Caprio , Adam M. Johansen

In many problems, complex non-Gaussian and/or nonlinear models are required to accurately describe a physical system of interest. In such cases, Monte Carlo algorithms are remarkably flexible and extremely powerful approaches to solve such…

Computation · Statistics 2015-04-23 Thi Le Thu Nguyen , Francois Septier , Gareth W. Peters , Yves Delignon

We propose new Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms to sample probability distributions on submanifolds, which generalize previous methods by allowing the use of set-valued maps in the proposal step of the MCMC algorithms. The motivation for…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-10-07 Tony Lelièvre , Gabriel Stoltz , Wei Zhang

This paper introduces a new technique for quantifying the approximation error of a broad class of probabilistic inference programs, including ones based on both variational and Monte Carlo approaches. The key idea is to derive a subjective…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-06-02 Marco F Cusumano-Towner , Vikash K Mansinghka