Related papers: Optimal Thinning of MCMC Output
Particle Markov Chain Monte Carlo (PMCMC) is a general computational approach to Bayesian inference for general state space models. Our article scales up PMCMC in terms of the number of observations and parameters by generating the…
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…
A method is developed to numerically solve chance constrained optimal control problems. The chance constraints are reformulated as nonlinear constraints that retain the probability properties of the original constraint. The reformulation…
Probabilistic models are conceptually powerful tools for finding structure in data, but their practical effectiveness is often limited by our ability to perform inference in them. Exact inference is frequently intractable, so approximate…
Binary optimization has a wide range of applications in combinatorial optimization problems such as MaxCut, MIMO detection, and MaxSAT. However, these problems are typically NP-hard due to the binary constraints. We develop a novel…
We propose a new Markov chain Monte Carlo method in which trial configurations are generated by evolving a state, sampled from a prior distribution, using a Markov transition matrix. We present two prototypical algorithms and derive their…
It has become increasingly easy nowadays to collect approximate posterior samples via fast algorithms such as variational Bayes, but concerns exist about the estimation accuracy. It is tempting to build solutions that exploit approximate…
Bayesian inference with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is challenging when the likelihood function is irregular and expensive to compute. We explore several sampling algorithms that make use of subset evaluations to reduce computational…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are often used for approximate inference inside learning, but their slow mixing can be difficult to diagnose and the approximations can seriously degrade learning. To alleviate these issues, we…
Particle Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods are used to carry out inference in non-linear and non-Gaussian state space models, where the posterior density of the states is approximated using particles. Current approaches usually perform…
In MCMC methods, such as the Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm, the Gibbs sampler, or recent adaptive methods, many different strategies can be proposed, often associated in practice to unknown rates of convergence. In this paper we…
The design of the proposal distributions, and most notably the kernel parameters, are crucial for the performance of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) rendering. A poor selection of parameters can increase the correlation of the Markov chain…
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…
The Markov Chain Monte Carlo method is at the heart of efficient approximation schemes for a wide range of problems in combinatorial enumeration and statistical physics. It is therefore very natural and important to determine whether…
We elaborate the idea behind Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods in a mathematically coherent, yet simple and understandable way. To this end, we proof a pivotal convergence theorem for finite Markov chains and a minimal version of the…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are often used in clustering since they guarantee asymptotically exact expectations in the infinite-time limit. In finite time, though, slow mixing often leads to poor performance. Modern computing…
Most successful applications of deep learning involve similar training and test conditions. However, tasks such as biological sequence design involve searching for sequences that improve desirable properties beyond previously known values,…
We discuss a Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) procedure for the random sampling of some one-dimensional lattice paths with constraints, for various constraints. We show that an approach inspired by optimal transport allows us to bound…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms provide a very general recipe for estimating properties of complicated distributions. While their use has become commonplace and there is a large literature on MCMC theory and practice, MCMC users…
Stein importance sampling is a widely applicable technique based on kernelized Stein discrepancy, which corrects the output of approximate sampling algorithms by reweighting the empirical distribution of the samples. A general analysis of…