Related papers: The Taxicab Sampler: MCMC for Discrete Spaces with…

Posterior sampling is a task of central importance in Bayesian inference. For many applications in Bayesian meta-analysis and Bayesian transfer learning, the prior distribution is unknown and needs to be estimated from samples. In practice,…

We propose a general and scalable approximate sampling strategy for probabilistic models with discrete variables. Our approach uses gradients of the likelihood function with respect to its discrete inputs to propose updates in a…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are a popular technique in Bayesian statistical modeling. They have long been used to obtain samples from posterior distributions, but recent research has focused on the scalability of these…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a powerful tool for sampling from complex probability distributions. Despite its versatility, MCMC often suffers from strong autocorrelation and the negative sign problem, leading to slowing down the…

In this paper, we perform Bayesian Inference to analyze spatial tree count data from the Timiskaming and Abitibi River forests in Ontario, Canada. We consider a Bayesian Generalized Linear Geostatistical Model and implement a Markov Chain…

I show how Markov chain sampling with the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm can be modified so as to take bigger steps when the distribution being sampled from has the characteristic that its density can be quickly recomputed for a new point if…

Piecewise-deterministic Markov process (PDMP) samplers constitute a state-of-the-art Markov chain Monte Carlo paradigm in Bayesian computation, with examples including the zig-zag and bouncy particle sampler (bps). Recent work on the…

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…

A new class of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, based on simulating piecewise deterministic Markov processes (PDMPs), have recently shown great promise: they are non-reversible, can mix better than standard MCMC algorithms, and…

Rich data generating mechanisms are ubiquitous in this age of information and require complex statistical models to draw meaningful inference. While Bayesian analysis has seen enormous development in the last 30 years, benefitting from the…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are widely used for stochastic optimization, sampling, and integration of mathematical objective functions, in particular, in the context of Bayesian inverse problems and parameter estimation. For…

Federated learning performed by a decentralized networks of agents is becoming increasingly important with the prevalence of embedded software on autonomous devices. Bayesian approaches to learning benefit from offering more information as…

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is an efficient Bayesian sampling method that can make distant proposals in the parameter space by simulating a Hamiltonian dynamical system. Despite its popularity in machine learning and data science, HMC is…

There is increasing interest to develop Bayesian inferential algorithms for point process models with intractable likelihoods. A purpose of this paper is to illustrate the utility of using simulation based strategies, including Approximate…

Performing reliable Bayesian inference on a big data scale is becoming a keystone in the modern era of machine learning. A workhorse class of methods to achieve this task are Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms and their design to…

Bottom-Up Hidden Tree Markov Model is a highly expressive model for tree-structured data. Unfortunately, it cannot be used in practice due to the intractable size of its state-transition matrix. We propose a new approximation which lies on…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are foundational algorithms for Bayesian inference and probabilistic modeling. However, most MCMC algorithms are inherently sequential and their time complexity scales linearly with the sequence…

Many machine learning applications require operating on a spatially distributed dataset. Despite technological advances, privacy considerations and communication constraints may prevent gathering the entire dataset in a central unit. In…

The Linear Ballistic Accumulator (Brown & Heathcote, 2008) model is used as a measurement tool to answer questions about applied psychology. The analyses based on this model depend upon the model selected and its estimated parameters.…

We develop a new Bayesian modelling framework for the class of higher-order, variable-memory Markov chains, and introduce an associated collection of methodological tools for exact inference with discrete time series. We show that a version…