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Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, such as the Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm, are widely used for Bayesian inference. One of the most important issues for any MCMC method is the convergence of the Markov chain, which depends…

Computation · Statistics 2015-11-20 Luca Martino , Jesse Read , David Luengo

We present a new method for conducting Monte Carlo inference in graphical models which combines explicit search with generalized importance sampling. The idea is to reduce the variance of importance sampling by searching for significant…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-01-18 Dale Schuurmans , Finnegan Southey

The Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) method has been recognized as a powerful sampling tool in computational statistics. We show that performance of HMC can be significantly improved by incorporating importance sampling and an irreversible…

Computation · Statistics 2019-07-26 Tijana Radivojević , Elena Akhmatskaya

The Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm is the prototype for a class of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods that propose transitions between states and then accept or reject the proposal. These methods generate a correlated sequence of random…

Computational Physics · Physics 2011-05-12 Albert H. Mao , Rohit V. Pappu

Markov chain Monte Carlo is a class of algorithms for drawing Markovian samples from high-dimensional target densities to approximate the numerical integration associated with computing statistical expectation, especially in Bayesian…

Computation · Statistics 2018-03-28 Khoa T. Tran

Accept-reject based Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are the workhorse algorithm for Bayesian inference. These algorithms, like Metropolis-Hastings, require choosing a proposal distribution which is typically informed by the desired…

Computation · Statistics 2026-04-21 Dwija Kakkad , Dootika Vats

To sample from a given target distribution, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling relies on constructing an ergodic Markov chain with the target distribution as its invariant measure. For any MCMC method, an important question is how to…

Probability · Mathematics 2023-08-15 Federica Milinanni , Pierre Nyquist

Metropolis-Hastings (MH) is a foundational Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm. In this paper, we ask whether it is possible to formulate and analyse MH in terms of categorical probability, using a recent involutive framework for…

Computation · Statistics 2026-02-02 Rob Cornish , Andi Q. Wang

One of the most widely used samplers in practice is the component-wise Metropolis-Hastings (CMH) sampler that updates in turn the components of a vector valued Markov chain using accept-reject moves generated from a proposal distribution.…

Computation · Statistics 2017-03-22 Jinyoung Yang , Evgeny Levi , Radu V. Craiu , Jeffrey S. Rosenthal

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are one of the most popular classes of algorithms for sampling from a target probability distribution. A rising trend in recent years consists in analyzing the convergence of MCMC algorithms using…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-04-30 Federica Milinanni

In engineering examples, one often encounters the need to sample from unnormalized distributions with complex shapes that may also be implicitly defined through a physical or numerical simulation model, making it computationally expensive…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-11-27 Promit Chakroborty , Michael D. Shields

Traditional MCMC algorithms are computationally intensive and do not scale well to large data. In particular, the Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm requires passing over the entire dataset to evaluate the likelihood ratio in each…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-08-29 Tung-Yu Wu , Y. X. Rachel Wang , Wing H. Wong

Tasks such as record linkage and multi-target tracking, which involve reconstructing the set of objects that underlie some observed data, are particularly challenging for probabilistic inference. Recent work has achieved efficient and…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-07-02 Brian Milch , Stuart Russell

Bayesian modelling and computational inference by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a principled framework for large-scale uncertainty quantification, though is limited in practice by computational cost when implemented in the simplest…

Computation · Statistics 2020-09-21 Colin Fox , Tiangang Cui , Markus Neumayer

We explore a general framework in Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling where sequential proposals are tried as a candidate for the next state of the Markov chain. This sequential-proposal framework can be applied to various existing…

Computation · Statistics 2019-08-21 Joonha Park , Yves F. Atchadé

We propose a Monte Carlo algorithm to sample from high dimensional probability distributions that combines Markov chain Monte Carlo and importance sampling. We provide a careful theoretical analysis, including guarantees on robustness to…

Computation · Statistics 2019-09-18 Giacomo Zanella , Gareth Roberts

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to sample from a probability distribution $\pi$ defined on a space $(\Theta,\mathcal{T})$ consist of the simulation of realisations of Markov chains $\{\theta_{n},n\geq1\}$ of invariant distribution…

Computation · Statistics 2021-01-06 Christophe Andrieu , Sinan Yıldırım , Arnaud Doucet , Nicolas Chopin

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a powerful Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for sampling from complex high-dimensional continuous distributions. However, in many situations it is necessary or desirable to combine HMC with other…

Computation · Statistics 2022-01-24 Guangyao Zhou

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling is an important and commonly used tool for the analysis of hierarchical models. Nevertheless, practitioners generally have two options for MCMC: utilize existing software that generates a black-box…

We present a Metropolis-Hastings Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm for detecting hidden variables in a continuous time Bayesian network (CTBN), which uses reversible jumps in the sense defined by (Green 1995). In common with several…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-03-18 Blazej Miasojedow , Wojciech Niemiro , John Noble , Krzysztof Opalski