Related papers: Variance reduction for dependent sequences with ap…
Bayesian methods have proved powerful in many applications for the inference of model parameters from data. These methods are based on Bayes' theorem, which itself is deceptively simple. However, in practice the computations required are…
If the conclusion of a data analysis is sensitive to dropping very few data points, that conclusion might hinge on the particular data at hand rather than representing a more broadly applicable truth. How could we check whether this…
Many problems involve the use of models which learn probability distributions or incorporate randomness in some way. In such problems, because computing the true expected gradient may be intractable, a gradient estimator is used to update…
Stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SGMCMC) is a popular class of algorithms for scalable Bayesian inference. However, these algorithms include hyperparameters such as step size or batch size that influence the accuracy of…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling is computationally expensive, especially for complex models. Alternative methods make simplifying assumptions about the posterior to reduce computational burden, but their impact on predictive…
We study optimization algorithms based on variance reduction for stochastic gradient descent (SGD). Remarkable recent progress has been made in this direction through development of algorithms like SAG, SVRG, SAGA. These algorithms have…
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…
When dealing with datasets containing a billion instances or with simulations that require a supercomputer to execute, computational resources become part of the equation. We can improve the efficiency of learning and inference by…
Variance reduction (VR) methods boost the performance of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) by enabling the use of larger, constant stepsizes and preserving linear convergence rates. However, current variance reduced SGD methods require…
In this paper a novel modification of the multilevel Monte Carlo approach, allowing for further significant complexity reduction, is proposed. The idea of the modification is to use the method of control variates to reduce variance at level…
Parametric verification of linear temporal properties for stochastic models can be expressed as computing the satisfaction probability of a certain property as a function of the parameters of the model. Smoothed model checking (smMC) aims…
While multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) methods for the numerical approximation of partial differential equations with random coefficients enjoy great popularity, combinations with spatial adaptivity seem to be rare. We present an adaptive MLMC…
In geostatistics, Gaussian random fields are often used to model heterogeneities of soil or subsurface parameters. To give spatial approximations of these random fields, they are discretized. Then, different techniques of geostatistical…
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…
We introduce an efficient MCMC sampling scheme to perform Bayesian inference in the M/G/1 queueing model given only observations of interdeparture times. Our MCMC scheme uses a combination of Gibbs sampling and simple Metropolis updates…
Mean-field variational inference is a method for approximate Bayesian posterior inference. It approximates a full posterior distribution with a factorized set of distributions by maximizing a lower bound on the marginal likelihood. This…
We consider the problem of estimating the asymptotic variance of a function defined on a Markov chain, an important step for statistical inference of the stationary mean. We design a novel recursive estimator that requires $O(1)$…
Sample-based Bayesian inference provides a route to uncertainty quantification in the geosciences, and inverse problems in general, though is very computationally demanding in the naive form that requires simulating an accurate computer…
We consider parallel asynchronous Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling for problems where we can leverage (stochastic) gradients to define continuous dynamics which explore the target distribution. We outline a solution strategy for…
This paper considers inference for conditional moment inequality models using a multiscale statistic. We derive the asymptotic distribution of this test statistic and use the result to propose feasible critical values that have a simple…