Related papers: Nested $\hat R$: Assessing the convergence of Mark…

Diagnosing convergence of Markov chain Monte Carlo is crucial and remains an essentially unsolved problem. Among the most popular methods, the potential scale reduction factor, commonly named $\hat{R}$, is an indicator that monitors the…

Markov chain Monte Carlo is a key computational tool in Bayesian statistics, but it can be challenging to monitor the convergence of an iterative stochastic algorithm. In this paper we show that the convergence diagnostic $\widehat{R}$ of…

Today, cheap numerical hardware offers huge amounts of parallel computing power, much of which is used for the task of fitting neural networks to data. Adoption of this hardware to accelerate statistical Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)…

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…

Markov chain Monte Carlo is an inherently serial algorithm. Although likelihood calculations for individual steps can sometimes be parallelized, the serial evolution of the process is widely viewed as incompatible with parallelization,…

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…

We present a general framework for accelerating a large class of widely used Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. Our approach exploits fast, iterative approximations to the target density to speculatively evaluate many potential…

As it has become common to use many computer cores in routine applications, finding good ways to parallelize popular algorithms has become increasingly important. In this paper, we present a parallelization scheme for Markov chain Monte…

It has become increasingly easy nowadays to collect approximate posterior samples via fast algorithms such as variational Bayes, but concerns exist about the estimation accuracy. It is tempting to build solutions that exploit approximate…

We introduce a general Monte Carlo method based on Nested Sampling (NS), for sampling complex probability distributions and estimating the normalising constant. The method uses one or more particles, which explore a mixture of nested…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is one of the most useful approaches to scientific computing because of its flexible construction, ease of use and generality. Indeed, MCMC is indispensable for performing Bayesian analysis. Two critical…

We introduce a new class of sequential Monte Carlo methods which reformulates the essence of the nested sampling method of Skilling (2006) in terms of sequential Monte Carlo techniques. Two new algorithms are proposed, nested sampling via…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are essential tools in computational statistics for sampling from unnormalised probability distributions, but can be fragile when targeting high-dimensional, multimodal, or complex target…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) has transformed Bayesian model inference over the past three decades: mainly because of this, Bayesian inference is now a workhorse of applied scientists. Under general conditions, MCMC sampling converges…

We introduce a revised derivation of the bitwise Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) detector. The new approach resolves the previously reported high SNR stalling problem of MCMC without the need for…

Single-chain Markov chain Monte Carlo simulates realizations from a Markov chain to estimate expectations with the empirical average. The single-chain simulation is generally of considerable length and restricts many advantages of modern…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms provide a very general recipe for estimating properties of complicated distributions. While their use has become commonplace and there is a large literature on MCMC theory and practice, MCMC users…

Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms are used to simulate from complex statistical distributions by way of a local exploration of these distributions. This local feature avoids heavy requests on understanding the nature of the target, but it…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are frequently used to perform inference under a Bayesian modeling framework. Convergence diagnostics, such as traceplots, the Gelman-Rubin potential scale reduction factor, and effective sample…

The data torrent unleashed by current and upcoming astronomical surveys demands scalable analysis methods. Many machine learning approaches scale well, but separating the instrument measurement from the physical effects of interest, dealing…