Related papers: Joint control variate for faster black-box variati…
The Black Box Variational Inference (Ranganath et al. (2014)) algorithm provides a universal method for Variational Inference, but taking advantage of special properties of the approximation family or of the target can improve the…
We study an optimal control problem under uncertainty, where the target function is the solution of an elliptic partial differential equation with random coefficients, steered by a control function. The robust formulation of the…
We present a novel control variate technique for enhancing the efficiency of Monte Carlo (MC) estimation of expectations involving solutions to stochastic differential equations (SDEs). Our method integrates a primary fine-time-step…
Flexible variational distributions improve variational inference but are harder to optimize. In this work we present a control variate that is applicable for any reparameterizable distribution with known mean and covariance matrix, e.g.…
Bayesian parameter inference for complex stochastic simulators is challenging due to intractable likelihood functions. Existing simulation-based inference methods often require large number of simulations and become costly to use in…
Zero-variance control variates (ZV-CV) are a post-processing method to reduce the variance of Monte Carlo estimators of expectations using the derivatives of the log target. Once the derivatives are available, the only additional…
Bayesian methods are particularly effective for addressing inverse problems due to their ability to manage uncertainties inherent in the inference process. However, employing these methods with costly forward models poses significant…
Classical algorithms in numerical analysis for numerical integration (quadrature/cubature) follow the principle of approximate and integrate: the integrand is approximated by a simple function (e.g. a polynomial), which is then integrated…
Standard Monte Carlo computation is widely known to exhibit a canonical square-root convergence speed in terms of sample size. Two recent techniques, one based on control variate and one on importance sampling, both derived from an…
Recent advances in coreset methods have shown that a selection of representative datapoints can replace massive volumes of data for Bayesian inference, preserving the relevant statistical information and significantly accelerating…
Driven by several successful applications such as in stochastic gradient descent or in Bayesian computation, control variates have become a major tool for Monte Carlo integration. However, standard methods do not allow the distribution of…
Machine learning models are commonly applied to human brain imaging datasets in an effort to associate function or structure with behaviour, health, or other individual phenotypes. Such models often rely on low-dimensional maps generated by…
Variance reduction techniques have been shown by others in the past to be a useful tool to reduce variance in Simulation studies. However, their application and success in the past has been mainly domain specific, with relatively little…
A broad class of hybrid quantum-classical algorithms known as "variational algorithms" have been proposed in the context of quantum simulation, machine learning, and combinatorial optimization as a means of potentially achieving a quantum…
We develop a Monte-Carlo based numerical method for solving discrete-time stochastic optimal control problems with inventory. These are optimal control problems in which the control affects only a deterministically evolving inventory…
We present a general approach to greatly increase at little cost the efficiency of Monte Carlo algorithms. To each observable to be computed we associate a renormalized observable (improved estimator) having the same average but a different…
Monte Carlo studies of many quantum systems face exponentially severe signal-to-noise problems. We show that noise arising from complex phase fluctuations of observables can be reduced without introducing bias using path integral contour…
For many complex simulation tasks spanning areas such as healthcare, engineering, and finance, Monte Carlo (MC) methods are invaluable due to their unbiased estimates and precise error quantification. Nevertheless, Monte Carlo simulations…
Gradient-based Monte Carlo sampling algorithms, like Langevin dynamics and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, are important methods for Bayesian inference. In large-scale settings, full-gradients are not affordable and thus stochastic gradients…
Monte Carlo methods are widely used for neutron transport simulations at least partly because of the accuracy they bring to the modeling of these problems. However, the computational burden associated with the slow convergence rate of Monte…