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Using Markov chain Monte Carlo to sample from posterior distributions was the key innovation which made Bayesian data analysis practical. Notoriously, however, MCMC is hard to tune, hard to diagnose, and hard to parallelize. This…

The Monte Carlo algorithm is increasingly utilized, with its central step involving computer-based random sampling from stochastic models. While both Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and Reject Monte Carlo serve as sampling methods, the…

In many branches of engineering, Banach contraction mapping theorem is employed to establish the convergence of certain deterministic algorithms. Randomized versions of these algorithms have been developed that have proved useful in…

We introduce the Conditional Mutual Information (CMI) for the estimation of the Markov chain order. For a Markov chain of $K$ symbols, we define CMI of order $m$, $I_c(m)$, as the mutual information of two variables in the chain being $m$…

In this paper we propose an efficient variance reduction approach for additive functionals of Markov chains relying on a novel discrete time martingale representation. Our approach is fully non-asymptotic and does not require the knowledge…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are widely used in machine learning. One of the major problems with MCMC is the question of how to design chains that mix fast over the whole state space; in particular, how to select the parameters…

Importance sampling is a variance reduction technique for efficient estimation of rare-event probabilities by Monte Carlo. In standard importance sampling schemes, the system is simulated using an a priori fixed change of measure suggested…

An introduction to the use of linchpin variables in Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is provided. Before the widespread adoption of MCMC methods, conditional sampling using linchpin variables was essentially the only practical approach for…

Uniform sampling of binary matrix with fixed margins is an important and difficult problem in statistics, computer science, ecology and so on. The well-known swap algorithm would be inefficient when the size of the matrix becomes large or…

We propose approaches for testing implementations of Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods as well as of general Monte Carlo methods. Based on statistical hypothesis tests, these approaches can be used in a unit testing framework to, for…

The sum of $n$ {non-independent} Bernoulli random variables could be modeled in several different ways. One of these is the Multiplicative Binomial Distribution (MBD), introduced by Altham (1978) and revised by Lovison (1998). In this work,…

Markov chain Monte Carlo is a method of producing a correlated sample in order to estimate features of a target distribution via ergodic averages. A fundamental question is when should sampling stop? That is, when are the ergodic averages…

We investigate multivariate regular variation in the context of time-homogeneous Markov chains on general vector spaces and in random coefficient linear models. In the first part, we show that the regular variation of the stationary…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are simple and extremely powerful techniques to sample from almost arbitrary distributions. The flaw in practice is that it can take a large and/or unknown amount of time to converge to the…

An introduction to numerical large-deviation sampling is provided. First, direct biasing with a known distribution is explained. As simple example, the Bernoulli experiment is used throughout the text. Next, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)…

Ordered sequences of univariate or multivariate regressions provide statistical models for analysing data from randomized, possibly sequential interventions, from cohort or multi-wave panel studies, but also from cross-sectional or…

We consider n by n real matrices whose entries are non-degenerate random variables that are independent but non necessarily identically distributed, and show that the probability that such a matrix is singular is O(1/sqrt{n}). The purpose…

Sequential Monte Carlo Samplers are a class of stochastic algorithms for Monte Carlo integral estimation w.r.t. probability distributions, which combine elements of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods and importance sampling/resampling…

This article was motivated by the desire to improve Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for spatial survival models in which the locations of individuals in space are known. For a dataset comprising information on n individuals, standard…

We describe an exact test of the null hypothesis that a Markov chain is nth order versus the alternate hypothesis that it is $(n+1)$-th order. The procedure does not rely on asymptotic properties, but instead builds up the test statistic…