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Variational Bayes (VB) has become a widely-used tool for Bayesian inference in statistics and machine learning. Nonetheless, the development of the existing VB algorithms is so far generally restricted to the case where the variational…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-04 Minh-Ngoc Tran , Dang H. Nguyen , Duy Nguyen

Bayesian calibration of black-box computer models offers an established framework to obtain a posterior distribution over model parameters. Traditional Bayesian calibration involves the emulation of the computer model and an additive model…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-10-30 Sébastien Marmin , Maurizio Filippone

In applied Bayesian inference scenarios, users may have access to a large number of pre-existing model evaluations, for example from maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) optimization runs. However, traditional approximate inference techniques make…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-07-24 Chengkun Li , Grégoire Clarté , Martin Jørgensen , Luigi Acerbi

Bayesian inference provides principled uncertainty quantification, but accurate posterior sampling with MCMC can be computationally prohibitive for modern applications. Variational inference (VI) offers a scalable alternative and often…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-14 Laura Battaglia , Stefano Cortinovis , Chris Holmes , David T. Frazier , Jack Jewson

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…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2025-10-30 G. Robalo Rei , C. P. Schmidt , J. Nitzler , M. Dinkel , W. A. Wall

In this article we consider Bayesian parameter inference associated to partially-observed stochastic processes that start from a set B0 and are stopped or killed at the first hitting time of a known set A. Such processes occur naturally…

Computation · Statistics 2012-01-19 Ajay Jasra , Nikolas Kantas

Bayesian model comparison (BMC) offers a principled approach for assessing the relative merits of competing computational models and propagating uncertainty into model selection decisions. However, BMC is often intractable for the popular…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-11-27 Lasse Elsemüller , Martin Schnuerch , Paul-Christian Bürkner , Stefan T. Radev

The generality and robustness of inference algorithms is critical to the success of widely used probabilistic programming languages such as Stan, PyMC, Pyro, and Turing.jl. When designing a new general-purpose inference algorithm, whether…

ABC (approximate Bayesian computation) is a general approach for dealing with models with an intractable likelihood. In this work, we derive ABC algorithms based on QMC (quasi- Monte Carlo) sequences. We show that the resulting ABC…

Computation · Statistics 2018-05-08 Alexander Buchholz , Nicolas Chopin

Performing Bayesian inference via Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) can be exceedingly expensive when posterior evaluations invoke the evaluation of a computationally expensive model, such as a system of partial differential equations. In…

Computation · Statistics 2017-12-27 Patrick Conrad , Andrew Davis , Youssef Marzouk , Natesh Pillai , Aaron Smith

While Bayesian methods are extremely popular in statistics and machine learning, their application to massive datasets is often challenging, when possible at all. Indeed, the classical MCMC algorithms are prohibitively slow when both the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-04-23 Pierre Alquier , James Ridgway

Bayesian inference in biological modeling commonly relies on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling of a multidimensional and non-Gaussian posterior distribution that is not analytically tractable. Here, we present the implementation of a…

In the following article we consider approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) inference. We introduce a method for numerically approximating ABC posteriors using the multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC). A sequential Monte Carlo version of the…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-02-14 Ajay Jasra , Seongil Jo , David Nott , Christine Shoemaker , Raul Tempone

Bayesian analysis often concerns an evaluation of models with different dimensionality as is necessary in, for example, model selection or mixture models. To facilitate this evaluation, transdimensional Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-08-13 Daniel W. Heck , Antony M. Overstall , Quentin F. Gronau , Eric-Jan Wagenmakers

Variational Bayes (VB) is a scalable alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) for Bayesian posterior inference. Though popular, VB comes with few theoretical guarantees, most of which focus on well-specified models. However, models…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-08-13 Yixin Wang , David M. Blei

When performing Bayesian computations in practice, one is often faced with the challenge that the constituent model components and/or the data are only available in a distributed fashion, e.g. due to privacy concerns or sheer volume. While…

Computation · Statistics 2022-10-26 Joris Bierkens , Andrew Duncan

Bayesian inference in the presence of an intractable likelihood function is computationally challenging. When following a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach to approximate the posterior distribution in this context, one typically…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-10-03 Johan Alenlöv , Arnaud Doucet , Fredrik Lindsten

Bayesian inference allows us to define a posterior distribution over the weights of a generic neural network (NN). Exact posteriors are usually intractable, in which case approximations can be employed. One such approximation - variational…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Andrew Millard , Joshua Murphy , Peter Green , Simon Maskell

Bayesian approach, as a useful tool for quantifying uncertainties, has been widely used for solving inverse problems of partial differential equations (PDEs). One of the key difficulties for employing Bayesian approach for the issue is how…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-02-09 Junxiong Jia , Qian Zhao , Zongben Xu , Deyu Meng , Yee Leung

Probabilistic programming (PP) allows flexible specification of Bayesian statistical models in code. PyMC3 is a new, open-source PP framework with an intutive and readable, yet powerful, syntax that is close to the natural syntax…

Computation · Statistics 2015-07-30 John Salvatier , Thomas Wiecki , Christopher Fonnesbeck