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Bayesian inference in the presence of an intractable likelihood function is computationally challenging. When following a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach to approximate the posterior distribution in this context, one typically…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-10-03 Johan Alenlöv , Arnaud Doucet , Fredrik Lindsten

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…

Computation · Statistics 2026-04-21 Dwija Kakkad , Dootika Vats

Monte Carlo (MC) methods are widely used for Bayesian inference and optimization in statistics, signal processing and machine learning. A well-known class of MC methods are Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. In order to foster…

Computation · Statistics 2016-09-27 L. Martino , V. Elvira , D. Luengo , J. Corander , F. Louzada

To sample from a given target distribution, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling relies on constructing an ergodic Markov chain with the target distribution as its invariant measure. For any MCMC method, an important question is how to…

Probability · Mathematics 2023-08-15 Federica Milinanni , Pierre Nyquist

We extend the Langevin Monte Carlo (LMC) algorithm to compactly supported measures via a projection step, akin to projected Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD). We show that (projected) LMC allows to sample in polynomial time from a…

Probability · Mathematics 2016-08-08 Sébastien Bubeck , Ronen Eldan , Joseph Lehec

Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods are a class of techniques to sample approximately from any sequence of probability distributions using a combination of importance sampling and resampling steps. This paper is concerned with the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2012-03-05 Pierre Del Moral , Arnaud Doucet , Ajay Jasra

By facilitating the generation of samples from arbitrary probability distributions, Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is, arguably, \emph{the} tool for the evaluation of Bayesian inference problems that yield non-standard posterior…

Computation · Statistics 2021-05-27 Peter L Green , Robert E Moore , Ryan J Jackson , Jinglai Li , Simon Maskell

A common tool in the practice of Markov Chain Monte Carlo is to use approximating transition kernels to speed up computation when the desired kernel is slow to evaluate or intractable. A limited set of quantitative tools exist to assess the…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-01-14 Jeffrey Negrea , Jeffrey S. Rosenthal

In this work, we introduce a novel class of adaptive Monte Carlo methods, called adaptive independent sticky MCMC algorithms, for efficient sampling from a generic target probability density function (pdf). The new class of algorithms…

Computation · Statistics 2025-04-09 L. Martino , R. Casarin , F. Leisen , D. Luengo

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…

Computation · Statistics 2021-03-25 Sebastian Reuschen , Fabian Jobst , Wolfgang Nowak

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-12-09 Jost Tobias Springenberg , Aaron Klein , Stefan Falkner , Frank Hutter

We study the problem of approximate sampling from non-log-concave distributions, e.g., Gaussian mixtures, which is often challenging even in low dimensions due to their multimodality. We focus on performing this task via Markov chain Monte…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-30 Tim Tsz-Kit Lau , Han Liu , Thomas Pock

In order to tackle the problem of sampling from heavy tailed, high dimensional distributions via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, Yang, Latuszy\'nski, and Roberts (2022) (arXiv:2205.12112) introduces the stereographic projection as…

Computation · Statistics 2025-05-19 Cameron Bell , Krzystof Łatuszyński , Gareth O. Roberts

Particle Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods are used to carry out inference in non-linear and non-Gaussian state space models, where the posterior density of the states is approximated using particles. Current approaches usually perform…

Computation · Statistics 2019-09-30 Eduardo F. Mendes , Christopher K. Carter , David Gunawan , Robert Kohn

Sampling from complicated probability distributions is a hard computational problem arising in many fields, including statistical physics, optimization, and machine learning. Quantum computers have recently been used to sample from…

Performing exact Bayesian inference for complex models is computationally intractable. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms can provide reliable approximations of the posterior distribution but are expensive for large datasets and…

Computation · Statistics 2021-12-09 Maxime Vono , Daniel Paulin , Arnaud Doucet

We present a new Monte Carlo Markov Chain algorithm for CMB analysis in the low signal-to-noise regime. This method builds on and complements the previously described CMB Gibbs sampler, and effectively solves the low signal-to-noise…

Astrophysics · Physics 2011-02-11 J. B. Jewell , H. K. Eriksen , B. D. Wandelt , I. J. O'Dwyer , G. Huey , K. M. Gorski

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a sampling-based method for estimating features of probability distributions. MCMC methods produce a serially correlated, yet representative, sample from the desired distribution. As such it can be…

Computation · Statistics 2019-12-10 Dootika Vats , Nathan Robertson , James M Flegal , Galin L Jones

Recently there have been exciting developments in Monte Carlo methods, with the development of new MCMC and sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) algorithms which are based on continuous-time, rather than discrete-time, Markov processes. This has…

Computation · Statistics 2020-09-29 Paul Fearnhead , Joris Bierkens , Murray Pollock , Gareth O Roberts

It is common practice in Markov chain Monte Carlo to update the simulation one variable (or sub-block of variables) at a time, rather than conduct a single full-dimensional update. When it is possible to draw from each full-conditional…

Computation · Statistics 2013-10-03 Alicia A. Johnson , Galin L. Jones , Ronald C. Neath