Related papers: How Well Does the Metropolis Algorithm Cope With L…
A local search algorithm solving an NP-complete optimisation problem can be viewed as a stochastic process moving in an 'energy landscape' towards eventually finding an optimal solution. For the random 3-satisfiability problem, the…
Sampling from heavy-tailed and multimodal distributions is challenging when neither the target density nor the proposal density can be evaluated, as in $\alpha$-stable L\'evy-driven fractional Langevin algorithms. While the target…
We study the integration of functions with respect to an unknown density. We compare the simple Monte Carlo method (which is almost optimal for a certain large class of inputs) and compare it with the Metropolis algorithm (based on a…
We present a time complexity analysis of the Opt-IA artificial immune system (AIS). We first highlight the power and limitations of its distinguishing operators (i.e., hypermutations with mutation potential and ageing) by analysing them in…
Delayed-acceptance Metropolis-Hastings and delayed-acceptance pseudo-marginal Metropolis-Hastings algorithms can be applied when it is computationally expensive to calculate the true posterior or an unbiased stochastic approximation…
We study the problem of global maximization of a function f given a finite number of evaluations perturbed by noise. We consider a very weak assumption on the function, namely that it is locally smooth (in some precise sense) with respect…
Matrix completion is a basic machine learning problem that has wide applications, especially in collaborative filtering and recommender systems. Simple non-convex optimization algorithms are popular and effective in practice. Despite recent…
The multi-point Metropolis algorithm is an advanced MCMC technique based on drawing several correlated samples at each step and choosing one of them according to some normalized weights. We propose a variation of this technique where the…
A classical approach for approximating expectations of functions w.r.t. partially known distributions is to compute the average of function values along a trajectory of a Metropolis-Hastings (MH) Markov chain. A key part in the MH algorithm…
The Metropolis algorithm is arguably the most fundamental Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method. But the algorithm is not guaranteed to converge to the desired distribution in the case of multivariate binary distributions (e.g., Ising…
In this paper, we consider sampling from a class of distributions with thin tails supported on $\mathbb{R}^d$ and make two primary contributions. First, we propose a new Metropolized Algorithm With Optimization Step (MAO), which is well…
The move-acceptance hyper-heuristic was recently shown to be able to leave local optima with astonishing efficiency (Lissovoi et al., Artificial Intelligence (2023)). In this work, we propose two modifications to this algorithm that…
Local search is a fundamental optimization technique that is both widely used in practice and deeply studied in theory, yet its computational complexity remains poorly understood. The traditional frameworks, PLS and the standard algorithm…
A variety of strategies have been proposed for overcoming local optimality in metaheuristic search. This paper examines characteristics of moves that can be exploited to make good decisions about steps that lead away from a local optimum…
The Langevin Markov chain algorithms are widely deployed methods to sample from distributions in challenging high-dimensional and non-convex statistics and machine learning applications. Despite this, current bounds for the Langevin…
We give lower bounds on the performance of two of the most popular sampling methods in practice, the Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithm (MALA) and multi-step Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) with a leapfrog integrator, when applied to…
Among random sampling methods, Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms are foremost. Using a combination of analytical and numerical approaches, we study their convergence properties towards the steady state, within a random walk Metropolis…
We aim to improve upon the exploration of the general-purpose random walk Metropolis algorithm when the target has non-convex support $A \subset \mathbb{R}^d$, by reusing proposals in $A^c$ which would otherwise be rejected. The algorithm…
The compact genetic algorithm (cGA) is an non-elitist estimation of distribution algorithm which has shown to be able to deal with difficult multimodal fitness landscapes that are hard to solve by elitist algorithms. In this paper, we…
Among sub-optimal MAPF solvers, rule-based algorithms are particularly appealing since they are complete. Even in crowded scenarios, they allow finding a feasible solution that brings each agent to its target, preventing deadlock…