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Stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SG-MCMC) methods are Bayesian analogs to popular stochastic optimization methods; however, this connection is not well studied. We explore this relationship by applying simulated annealing to an…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-08-08 Changyou Chen , David Carlson , Zhe Gan , Chunyuan Li , Lawrence Carin

A novel class of non-reversible Markov chain Monte Carlo schemes relying on continuous-time piecewise-deterministic Markov Processes has recently emerged. In these algorithms, the state of the Markov process evolves according to a…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-05-16 Paul Vanetti , Alexandre Bouchard-Côté , George Deligiannidis , Arnaud Doucet

Stochastic gradient Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms are popular samplers for approximate inference, but they are generally biased. We show that many recent versions of these methods (e.g. Chen et al. (2014)) cannot be corrected using…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-03 Adrià Garriga-Alonso , Vincent Fortuin

We propose Kernel Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (KMC), a gradient-free adaptive MCMC algorithm based on Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC). On target densities where classical HMC is not an option due to intractable gradients, KMC adaptively learns…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-11-25 Heiko Strathmann , Dino Sejdinovic , Samuel Livingstone , Zoltan Szabo , Arthur Gretton

Recent work has suggested using Monte Carlo methods based on piecewise deterministic Markov processes (PDMPs) to sample from target distributions of interest. PDMPs are non-reversible continuous-time processes endowed with momentum, and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-06-28 Paul Fearnhead , Sebastiano Grazzi , Chris Nemeth , Gareth O. Roberts

In the last few decades, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have been widely applied to Bayesian updating of structural dynamic models in the field of structural health monitoring. Recently, several MCMC algorithms have been developed…

Applications · Statistics 2026-04-29 Xianghao Meng , James L. Beck , Yong Huang , Hui Li

Accurate estimates of long-term risk probabilities and their gradients are critical for many stochastic safe control methods. However, computing such risk probabilities in real-time and in unseen or changing environments is challenging.…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-08-20 Zhuoyuan Wang , Yorie Nakahira

Sampling from unnormalised discrete distributions is a fundamental problem across various domains. While Markov chain Monte Carlo offers a principled approach, it often suffers from slow mixing and poor convergence. In this paper, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-23 Zijing Ou , Ruixiang Zhang , Yingzhen Li

We propose a class of discrete state sampling algorithms based on Nesterov's accelerated gradient method, which extends the classical Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm. The evolution of the discrete states probability distribution governed…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-10 Bohan Zhou , Shu Liu , Xinzhe Zuo , Wuchen Li

In plasma edge simulations, kinetic Monte Carlo (MC) is often used to simulate neutral particles and estimate source terms. For large-sized reactors, like ITER and DEMO, high particle collision rates lead to a substantial computational cost…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2025-09-16 Zhirui Tang , Emil Løvbak , Julian Koellermeier , Giovanni Samaey

The sampling of probability distributions specified up to a normalization constant is an important problem in both machine learning and statistical mechanics. While classical stochastic sampling methods such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-27 Hao Wu , Jonas Köhler , Frank Noé

Bayesian Neural Networks (BNNs) provide a promising framework for modeling predictive uncertainty and enhancing out-of-distribution robustness (OOD) by estimating the posterior distribution of network parameters. Stochastic Gradient Markov…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Hyunsu Kim , Giung Nam , Chulhee Yun , Hongseok Yang , Juho Lee

Replica exchange Monte Carlo (reMC), also known as parallel tempering, is an important technique for accelerating the convergence of the conventional Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. However, such a method requires the evaluation…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-03-23 Wei Deng , Qi Feng , Liyao Gao , Faming Liang , Guang Lin

We introduce Projected Latent Markov Chain Monte Carlo (PL-MCMC), a technique for sampling from the high-dimensional conditional distributions learned by a normalizing flow. We prove that a Metropolis-Hastings implementation of PL-MCMC…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Chris Cannella , Mohammadreza Soltani , Vahid Tarokh

Reinforcement learning methods for robotics are increasingly successful due to the constant development of better policy gradient techniques. A precise (low variance) and accurate (low bias) gradient estimator is crucial to face…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-09 Joao Carvalho , Jan Peters

This study proposes a trainable sampling-based solver for combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) using a deep-learning technique called deep unfolding. The proposed solver is based on the Ohzeki method that combines Markov-chain…

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks · Physics 2024-05-03 Ryo Hagiwara , Satoshi Takabe

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a popular Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm that generates proposals for a Metropolis-Hastings algorithm by simulating the dynamics of a Hamiltonian system. However, HMC is sensitive to large time…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-09-15 Xiaoyu Lu , Valerio Perrone , Leonard Hasenclever , Yee Whye Teh , Sebastian J. Vollmer

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach that exhibits favourable exploration properties in high-dimensional models such as neural networks. Unfortunately, HMC has limited use in large-data regimes and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-15 Adam D. Cobb , Brian Jalaian

Recently, Stochastic Gradient Markov Chain Monte Carlo (SG-MCMC) methods have been proposed for scaling up Monte Carlo computations to large data problems. Whilst these approaches have proven useful in many applications, vanilla SG-MCMC…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-12-13 Umut Şimşekli , Roland Badeau , A. Taylan Cemgil , Gaël Richard

Recent advances in stochastic gradient techniques have made it possible to estimate posterior distributions from large datasets via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). However, when the target posterior is multimodal, mixing performance is…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-01-12 Yizhe Zhang , Changyou Chen , Zhe Gan , Ricardo Henao , Lawrence Carin