Related papers: Optimal Thinning of MCMC Output
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling methods are widely used but often encounter either slow convergence or biased sampling when applied to multimodal high dimensional distributions. In this paper, we present a general framework of…
This simple note lays out a few observations which are well known in many ways but may not have been said in quite this way before. The basic idea is that when comparing two different Markov chains it is useful to couple them is such a way…
A fundamental task in quantum information is to approximate a pure quantum state in terms of sparse states or, for a bipartite system, states of bounded Schmidt rank. The optimal deterministic approximation in each case is straightforward,…
Markov-chain Monte Carlo sampling has become a standard technique for exploring the posterior distribution of cosmological parameters constrained by observations of CMB anisotropies. Given an infinite amount of time, any MCMC sampler will…
We present an efficient algorithm for the inference of stochastic block models in large networks. The algorithm can be used as an optimized Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method, with a fast mixing time and a much reduced susceptibility to…
In this work we propose a hierarchy of Monte Carlo methods for sampling equilibrium properties of stochastic lattice systems with competing short and long range interactions. Each Monte Carlo step is composed by two or more sub - steps…
Global fits of physics models require efficient methods for exploring high-dimensional and/or multimodal posterior functions. We introduce a novel method for accelerating Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling by pairing a…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods require a large number of samples to approximate a posterior distribution, which can be costly when the likelihood or prior is expensive to evaluate. The number of samples can be reduced if we can…
A non trivial problem that arises in several applications is the estimation of the mean of a truncated normal distribution. In this paper, an iterative deterministic scheme for approximating this mean is proposed. It has been inspired from…
If the state space of a homogeneous continuous-time Markov chain is too large, making inferences - here limited to determining marginal or limit expectations - becomes computationally infeasible. Fortunately, the state space of such a chain…
This work introduces two Monte Carlo (MC)-based sampling methods, known as line sampling and subset simulation, to improve the performance of standard MC analyses in the context of asteroid impact risk assessment. Both techniques sample the…
Shrinkage strains measured from microstructural simulations using the mesoscale kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) model for solid state sintering are discussed. This model represents the microstructure using digitized discrete sites that are either…
Modern compression methods can summarize a target distribution $\mathbb{P}$ more succinctly than i.i.d. sampling but require access to a low-bias input sequence like a Markov chain converging quickly to $\mathbb{P}$. We introduce a new…
Exact approximations of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are a general emerging class of sampling algorithms. One of the main ideas behind exact approximations consists of replacing intractable quantities required to run standard…
Markov chains are an important tool for modelling and evaluating systems in computer science, economics, biology and numerous other fields. Thus, approximating Markov chains is a useful tool for decreasing the computational effort needed…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) produces a correlated sample for estimating expectations with respect to a target distribution. A fundamental question is when should sampling stop so that we have good estimates of the desired quantities?…
Bayesian formulation of modern day signal processing problems has called for improved Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling algorithms for inference. The need for efficient sampling techniques has become indispensable for high…
Computing the marginal likelihood or evidence is one of the core challenges in Bayesian analysis. While there are many established methods for estimating this quantity, they predominantly rely on using a large number of posterior samples…
It is often necessary to make sampling-based statistical inference about many probability distributions in parallel. Given a finite computational resource, this article addresses how to optimally divide sampling effort between the samplers…
We consider adaptive increasingly rare Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, which are adaptive MCMC methods, where the adaptation concerning the "past'' happens less and less frequently over time. Under a contraction assumption with…