Related papers: Optimal Scaling of MCMC Beyond Metropolis
Accept-reject based Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are the workhorse algorithm for Bayesian inference. These algorithms, like Metropolis-Hastings, require choosing a proposal distribution which is typically informed by the desired…
In this paper we shall consider optimal scaling problems for high-dimensional Metropolis--Hastings algorithms where updates can be chosen to be lower dimensional than the target density itself. We find that the optimal scaling rule for the…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have a drawback when working with a target distribution or likelihood function that is computationally expensive to evaluate, specially when working with big data. This paper focuses on…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are commonly used for their versatility in sampling from complicated probability distributions. However, as the dimension of the distribution gets larger, the computational costs for a satisfactory…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are routinely used to draw samples from distributions with intractable normalization constants. However, standard MCMC algorithms do not apply to doubly-intractable distributions in which there are…
We investigate the properties of the Hybrid Monte-Carlo algorithm (HMC) in high dimensions. HMC develops a Markov chain reversible w.r.t. a given target distribution $\Pi$ by using separable Hamiltonian dynamics with potential $-\log\Pi$.…
There is a tension between robustness and efficiency when designing Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling algorithms. Here we focus on robustness with respect to tuning parameters, showing that more sophisticated algorithms tend to be…
In parameter estimation problems one computes a posterior distribution over uncertain parameters defined jointly by a prior distribution, a model, and noisy data. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is often used for the numerical solution of…
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…
Monte Carlo (MC) sampling methods are widely applied in Bayesian inference, system simulation and optimization problems. The Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are a well-known class of MC methods which generate a Markov chain with…
We study the class of first-order locally-balanced Metropolis--Hastings algorithms introduced in Livingstone & Zanella (2021). To choose a specific algorithm within the class the user must select a balancing function $g:\mathbb{R} \to…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods sample from unnormalized probability distributions and offer guarantees of exact sampling. However, in the continuous case, unfavorable geometry of the target distribution can greatly limit the…
The Metropolis algorithm is one of the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods that realize sampling from the target probability distribution. In this paper, we are concerned with the sampling from the distribution in non-identifiable cases…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to sample from a probability distribution $\pi$ defined on a space $(\Theta,\mathcal{T})$ consist of the simulation of realisations of Markov chains $\{\theta_{n},n\geq1\}$ of invariant distribution…
One main limitation of the existing optimal scaling results for Metropolis--Hastings algorithms is that the assumptions on the target distribution are unrealistic. In this paper, we consider optimal scaling of random-walk Metropolis…
We introduce a gradient-based learning method to automatically adapt Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) proposal distributions to intractable targets. We define a maximum entropy regularised objective function, referred to as generalised speed…
We analyse computational efficiency of Metropolis-Hastings algorithms with stochastic AR(1) process proposals. These proposals include, as a subclass, discretized Langevin diffusion (e.g. MALA) and discretized Hamiltonian dynamics (e.g.…
The Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm is one of the most widely used Markov Chain Monte Carlo schemes for generating samples from Bayesian posterior distributions. The algorithm is asymptotically exact, flexible and easy to implement.…
There is a lack of methodological results to design efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms for statistical models with discrete-valued high-dimensional parameters. Motivated by this consideration, we propose a simple framework…
We propose a new class of learning algorithms that combines variational approximation and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation. Naive algorithms that use the variational approximation as proposal distribution can perform poorly…