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Related papers: Neural Control Variates

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In statistics and machine learning, approximation of an intractable integration is often achieved by using the unbiased Monte Carlo estimator, but the variances of the estimation are generally high in many applications. Control variates…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-10-16 Ruosi Wan , Mingjun Zhong , Haoyi Xiong , Zhanxing Zhu

This paper presents a method to leverage arbitrary neural network architecture for control variates. Control variates are crucial in reducing the variance of Monte Carlo integration, but they hinge on finding a function that both correlates…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-25 Zilu Li , Guandao Yang , Qingqing Zhao , Xi Deng , Leonidas Guibas , Bharath Hariharan , Gordon Wetzstein

Neural control variates (NCVs) have emerged as a powerful tool for variance reduction in Monte Carlo (MC) simulations, particularly in high-dimensional problems where traditional control variates are difficult to construct analytically. By…

High Energy Physics - Lattice · Physics 2025-08-22 Hyunwoo Oh

Control variates are a variance-reduction technique for Monte Carlo integration. The principle involves approximating the integrand by a function that can be analytically integrated, and integrating using the Monte Carlo method only the…

Graphics · Computer Science 2025-09-22 Daniel Meister , Takahiro Harada

Control variates can be a powerful tool to reduce the variance of Monte Carlo estimators, but constructing effective control variates can be challenging when the number of samples is small. In this paper, we show that when a large number of…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-06-08 Zhuo Sun , Chris J. Oates , François-Xavier Briol

Bayesian inference for inverse problems involves computing expectations under posterior distributions -- e.g., posterior means, variances, or predictive quantities -- typically via Monte Carlo (MC) estimation. When the quantity of interest…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-26 Ali Siahkoohi , Hyunwoo Oh

Control variates are variance reduction tools for Monte Carlo estimators. They can provide significant variance reduction, but usually require a large number of samples, which can be prohibitive when sampling or evaluating the integrand is…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-06-08 Zhuo Sun , Alessandro Barp , François-Xavier Briol

In this work, we introduce a control variate approximation technique for low error approximate Deep Neural Network (DNN) accelerators. The control variate technique is used in Monte Carlo methods to achieve variance reduction. Our approach…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-16 Georgios Zervakis , Ourania Spantidi , Iraklis Anagnostopoulos , Hussam Amrouch , Jörg Henkel

Results obtained with stochastic methods have an inherent uncertainty due to the finite number of samples that can be achieved in practice. In lattice QCD this problem is particularly salient in some observables like, for instance,…

High Energy Physics - Lattice · Physics 2025-03-13 Paulo F. Bedaque , Hyunwoo Oh

The control variates method is a classical variance reduction technique for Monte Carlo estimators that exploits correlated auxiliary variables without introducing bias. In many applications, the quantity of interest can be expressed as a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-11-10 Louison Bocquet-Nouaille , Jérôme Morio , Benjamin Bobbia

In this paper we present a new approach to control variates for improving computational efficiency of Ensemble Monte Carlo. We present the approach using simulation of paths of a time-dependent nonlinear stochastic equation. The core idea…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2008-09-25 T. Borogovac , F. J. Alexander , P. Vakili

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…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-04-02 Rémi Leluc , François Portier , Johan Segers

Control variates are variance reduction techniques for Monte Carlo estimators. They play a critical role in improving Monte Carlo estimators in scientific and machine learning applications that involve computationally expensive integrals.…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-27 Kaiyu Li , Yiming Yang , Xiaoyuan Cheng , Yi He , Zhuo Sun

This paper studies the use of a machine learning-based estimator as a control variate for mitigating the variance of Monte Carlo sampling. Specifically, we seek to uncover the key factors that influence the efficiency of control variates in…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-05-29 Jose Blanchet , Haoxuan Chen , Yiping Lu , Lexing Ying

We propose a new way of training neural networks, with the goal of reducing training cost. Our method uses approximate predicted gradients instead of the full gradients that require an expensive backward pass. We derive a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-10 Kamil Ciosek , Nicolò Felicioni , Juan Elenter Litwin

Control variates are a well-established tool to reduce the variance of Monte Carlo estimators. However, for large-scale problems including high-dimensional and large-sample settings, their advantages can be outweighed by a substantial…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-07-22 Shijing Si , Chris. J. Oates , Andrew B. Duncan , Lawrence Carin , François-Xavier Briol

We provide theoretical convergence bounds for the variational Monte Carlo (VMC) method as applied to optimize neural network wave functions for the electronic structure problem. We study both the energy minimization phase and the supervised…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-07 Nilin Abrahamsen , Zhiyan Ding , Gil Goldshlager , Lin Lin

Multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) is a recently proposed variation of Monte Carlo (MC) simulation that achieves variance reduction by simulating the governing equations on a series of spatial (or temporal) grids with increasing resolution.…

Computation · Statistics 2017-04-26 Hillary Fairbanks , Alireza Doostan , Christian Ketelsen , Gianluca Iaccarino

Black-box variational inference performance is sometimes hindered by the use of gradient estimators with high variance. This variance comes from two sources of randomness: Data subsampling and Monte Carlo sampling. While existing control…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-11 Xi Wang , Tomas Geffner , Justin Domke

The control variates (CV) method is widely used in policy gradient estimation to reduce the variance of the gradient estimators in practice. A control variate is applied by subtracting a baseline function from the state-action value…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-12 Yuanyi Zhong , Yuan Zhou , Jian Peng
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