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Modern applications of Bayesian inference involve models that are sufficiently complex that the corresponding posterior distributions are intractable and must be approximated. The most common approximation is based on Markov chain Monte…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-05-15 Yue Yang , Ryan Martin , Howard Bondell

Complex simulator-based models are now routinely used to perform inference across the sciences and engineering, but existing inference methods are often unable to account for outliers and other extreme values in data which occur due to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-18 Ayush Bharti , Charita Dellaporta , Yuga Hikida , François-Xavier Briol

Simulation models often lack tractable likelihood functions, making likelihood-free inference methods indispensable. Approximate Bayesian computation generates likelihood-free posterior samples by comparing simulated and observed data…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-02-02 Joel Dyer , Patrick Cannon , Sebastian M Schmon

The likelihood function plays a pivotal role in statistical inference; it is adaptable to a wide range of models and the resultant estimators are known to have good properties. However, these results hinge on correct specification of the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2017-12-15 Adam Jaeger , Nicole Lazar

While Bayesian methods are praised for their ability to incorporate useful prior knowledge, in practice, convenient priors that allow for computationally cheap or tractable inference are commonly used. In this paper, we investigate the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-07-14 Willie Neiswanger , Eric Xing

Modeled along the truncated approach in Panigrahi (2016), selection-adjusted inference in a Bayesian regime is based on a selective posterior. Such a posterior is determined together by a generative model imposed on data and the selection…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-09-12 Snigdha Panigrahi , Jonathan Taylor

Selective inference aims at providing valid inference after a data-driven selection of models or hypotheses. It is essential to avoid overconfident results and replicability issues. While significant advances have been made in this area for…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-03-14 Matteo D'Alessandro , Magne Thoresen

Many modern unsupervised or semi-supervised machine learning algorithms rely on Bayesian probabilistic models. These models are usually intractable and thus require approximate inference. Variational inference (VI) lets us approximate a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-24 Cheng Zhang , Judith Butepage , Hedvig Kjellstrom , Stephan Mandt

This paper is concerned with Bayesian inference when the likelihood is analytically intractable but can be unbiasedly estimated. We propose an annealed importance sampling procedure for estimating expectations with respect to the posterior.…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-02-26 M. -N. Tran , C. Strickland , M. K. Pitt , R. Kohn

Exponential random graph models are an important tool in the statistical analysis of data. However, Bayesian parameter estimation for these models is extremely challenging, since evaluation of the posterior distribution typically involves…

Computation · Statistics 2017-05-05 Lampros Bouranis , Nial Friel , Florian Maire

In real-world Bayesian inference applications, prior assumptions regarding the parameters of interest may be unrepresentative of their actual values for a given dataset. In particular, if the likelihood is concentrated far out in the wings…

Computation · Statistics 2018-11-01 Xi Chen , Mike Hobson , Saptarshi Das , Paul Gelderblom

Likelihood-free methods perform parameter inference in stochastic simulator models where evaluating the likelihood is intractable but sampling synthetic data is possible. One class of methods for this likelihood-free problem uses a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-12-21 Conor Durkan , Iain Murray , George Papamakarios

The classical Bayesian posterior arises naturally as the unique solution of several different optimization problems, without the necessity of interpreting data as conditional probabilities and then using Bayes' Theorem. For example, the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2012-03-02 Theodore P. Hill , Marco Dall'Aglio

Post-data statistical inference concerns making probability statements about model parameters conditional on observed data. When a priori knowledge about parameters is available, post-data inference can be conveniently made from Bayesian…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-06-05 Yang Liu , Jan Hannig , Alexander C Murph

In this article the issues are discussed with the Bayesian approach, least-square fits, and most-likely fits. Trying to counter these issues, a method, based on weighted confidence, is proposed for estimating probabilities and other…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2017-01-26 Fetze Pijlman

Generative models and those with computationally intractable likelihoods are widely used to describe complex systems in the natural sciences, social sciences, and engineering. Fitting these models to data requires likelihood-free inference…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-12-04 Rui Zhang , Oksana A. Chkrebtii , Dongbin Xiu

In this work we consider Bayesian inference problems with intractable likelihood functions. We present a method to compute an approximate of the posterior with a limited number of model simulations. The method features an inverse Gaussian…

Computation · Statistics 2021-02-23 Hongqiao Wang , Ziqiao Ao , Tengchao Yu , Jinglai Li

Motivated by parametric models for which the likelihood is analytically unavailable, numerically unstable, or prohibitively expensive to compute or optimize, we develop a prior- and likelihood-free framework for fully probabilistic…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-17 Leonardo Cella , Emily C. Hector

Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) methods are applicable to statistical models specified by generative processes with analytically intractable likelihoods. These methods try to approximate the posterior density of a model parameter by…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-03-11 Sanjay Chaudhuri , Subhroshekhar Ghosh , Kim Cuc Pham

Multiple imputation (MI) is a method for repairing and analyzing data with missing values. MI replaces missing values with a sample of random values drawn from an imputation model. The most popular form of MI, which we call posterior draw…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-11-18 Paul T. von Hippel , Jonathan Bartlett