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Estimation of finite mixture models when the mixing distribution support is unknown is an important problem. This paper gives a new approach based on a marginal likelihood for the unknown support. Motivated by a Bayesian Dirichlet prior…

Methodology · Statistics 2013-02-11 Ryan Martin

The Metropolis algorithm is a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm used to simulate from parameter distributions of interest, such as generalized linear model parameters. The "Metropolis step" is a keystone concept that underlies…

Computation · Statistics 2023-08-31 Alexander P Keil , Jessie K Edwards , Ashley I Naimi , Stephen R Cole

Likelihood-free methods, such as approximate Bayesian computation, are powerful tools for practical inference problems with intractable likelihood functions. Markov chain Monte Carlo and sequential Monte Carlo variants of approximate…

Computation · Statistics 2019-02-26 David J. Warne , Ruth E. Baker , Matthew J. Simpson

Posterior inference with an intractable likelihood is becoming an increasingly common task in scientific domains which rely on sophisticated computer simulations. Typically, these forward models do not admit tractable densities forcing…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-06-29 Joeri Hermans , Volodimir Begy , Gilles Louppe

This paper introduces a framework for speeding up Bayesian inference conducted in presence of large datasets. We design a Markov chain whose transition kernel uses an (unknown) fraction of (fixed size) of the available data that is randomly…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-06-01 Florian Maire , Nial Friel , Pierre Alquier

Bayesian hierarchical modeling is a popular approach to capturing unobserved heterogeneity across individual units. However, standard estimation methods such as Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) can be impracticable for modeling outcomes from…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-11-04 Michael Braun , Paul Damien

In this paper, we address the challenge of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms within the approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) framework, which often get trapped in local optima due to their inherent local exploration mechanism. We…

Computation · Statistics 2025-12-16 Xuefei Cao , Shijia Wang , Yongdao Zhou

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have revolutionised Bayesian data analysis over the years by making the direct computation of posterior probability densities feasible on modern workstations. However, the calculation of the prior…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Rutger van Haasteren

Bayesian inference of Gibbs random fields (GRFs) is often referred to as a doubly intractable problem, since the likelihood function is intractable. The exploration of the posterior distribution of such models is typically carried out with…

Computation · Statistics 2017-10-16 Aidan Boland , Nial Friel , Florian Maire

The Markov chain Monte Carlo method (MCMC), especially the Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm, is a widely used technique for sampling from a target probability distribution $P$ on a state space $\Omega$ and applied to various problems such…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-03-13 Koichi Miyamoto

Bayesian inference methods such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) typically require repeated computations of the likelihood function, but in some scenarios this is infeasible and alternative methods are needed. Simulation-based inference…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-10 Linnea M Wolniewicz , Peter Sadowski , Claudio Corti

Estimating copulas with discrete marginal distributions is challenging, especially in high dimensions, because computing the likelihood contribution of each observation requires evaluating $2^{J}$ terms, with $J$ the number of discrete…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-11-12 D. Gunawan , M. -N. Tran , K. Suzuki , J. Dick , R. Kohn

Performing Bayesian inference via Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) can be exceedingly expensive when posterior evaluations invoke the evaluation of a computationally expensive model, such as a system of partial differential equations. In…

Computation · Statistics 2017-12-27 Patrick Conrad , Andrew Davis , Youssef Marzouk , Natesh Pillai , Aaron Smith

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a well-established family of algorithms primarily used in Bayesian statistics to sample from a target distribution when direct sampling is challenging. Existing work on Bayesian decision trees uses MCMC.…

Computation · Statistics 2023-01-24 Efthyvoulos Drousiotis , Paul G. Spirakis , Simon Maskell

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is the predominant tool used in Bayesian parameter estimation for hierarchical models. When the model expands due to an increasing number of hierarchical levels, number of groups at a particular level, or…

Computation · Statistics 2016-06-22 Will Landau , Jarad Niemi

Recent advances in stochastic gradient variational inference have made it possible to perform variational Bayesian inference with posterior approximations containing auxiliary random variables. This enables us to explore a new synthesis of…

Computation · Statistics 2015-05-20 Tim Salimans , Diederik P. Kingma , Max Welling

Statistical inference in evolutionary models with site-dependence is a long-standing challenge in phylogenetics and computational biology. We consider the problem of approximating marginal sequence likelihoods under dependent-site models of…

Computation · Statistics 2025-11-12 Joseph Mathews , Scott C. Schmidler

Accurate and efficient estimation of rare events probabilities is of significant importance, since often the occurrences of such events have widespread impacts. The focus in this work is on precisely quantifying these probabilities, often…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-05-23 Konstantinos G. Papakonstantinou , Hamed Nikbakht , Elsayed Eshra

Bayesian modelling and computational inference by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a principled framework for large-scale uncertainty quantification, though is limited in practice by computational cost when implemented in the simplest…

Computation · Statistics 2020-09-21 Colin Fox , Tiangang Cui , Markus Neumayer

In the following article we consider approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) inference. We introduce a method for numerically approximating ABC posteriors using the multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC). A sequential Monte Carlo version of the…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-02-14 Ajay Jasra , Seongil Jo , David Nott , Christine Shoemaker , Raul Tempone