Related papers: Generalized Stratified Sampling for Efficient Reli…
The basic problem in equilibrium statistical mechanics is to compute phase space average, in which Monte Carlo method plays a very important role. We begin with a review of nonlocal algorithms for Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation in…
We propose an efficient probabilistic method to solve a deterministic problem -- we present a randomized optimization approach that drastically reduces the enormous computational cost of optimizing designs under many load cases for both…
Stochastic approximation is a framework unifying many random iterative algorithms occurring in a diverse range of applications. The stability of the process is often difficult to verify in practical applications and the process may even be…
To increase statistical efficiency in a randomized experiment, researchers often use stratification (i.e., blocking) in the design stage. However, conventional practices of stratification fail to exploit valuable information about the…
Model performance evaluation is a critical and expensive task in machine learning and computer vision. Without clear guidelines, practitioners often estimate model accuracy using a one-time completely random selection of the data. However,…
As a physical fact, randomness is an inherent and ineliminable aspect in all physical measurements and engineering production. As a consequence, material parameters, serving as input data, are only known in a stochastic sense and thus, also…
Stochastic approximation methods play a central role in maximum likelihood estimation problems involving intractable likelihood functions, such as marginal likelihoods arising in problems with missing or incomplete data, and in parametric…
Traditional gradient-based sampling methods, like standard Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, require that the desired target distribution is continuous and differentiable. This limits the types of models one can define, although the presented models…
We propose a methodology to sample from time-integrated stochastic bridges, namely random variables defined as $\int_{t_1}^{t_2} f(Y(t))dt$ conditioned on $Y(t_1)\!=\!a$ and $Y(t_2)\!=\!b$, with $a,b\in R$. The Stochastic Collocation Monte…
Monte Carlo sampling techniques have broad applications in machine learning, Bayesian posterior inference, and parameter estimation. Often the target distribution takes the form of a product distribution over a dataset with a large number…
In the last fifteen the subset sampling method has often been used in reliability problems as a tool for calculating small probabilities. This method is extrapolating from an initial Monte Carlo estimate for the probability content of a…
We present adaptive sequential SAA (sample average approximation) algorithms to solve large-scale two-stage stochastic linear programs. The iterative algorithm framework we propose is organized into \emph{outer} and \emph{inner} iterations…
MCMC methods (Monte Carlo Markov Chain) are a class of methods used to perform simulations per a probability distribution $P$. These methods are often used when we have difficulties to directly sample per a given probability distribution…
We propose a computational framework to quantify (measure) and to optimize the reliability of complex systems. The approach uses a graph representation of the system that is subject to random failures of its components (nodes and edges).…
Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are primarily used for sampling from a given probability distribution and estimating multi-dimensional integrals based on the information contained in the generated samples. Whenever it is possible, more…
In computational mechanics, multiple models are often present to describe a physical system. While Bayesian model selection is a helpful tool to compare these models using measurement data, it requires the computationally expensive…
We introduce Path-ZVA: an efficient simulation technique for estimating the probability of reaching a rare goal state before a regeneration state in a (discrete-time) Markov chain. Standard Monte Carlo simulation techniques do not work well…
Stochastic processes are a flexible and widely used family of models for statistical modeling. While stochastic processes offer attractive properties such as inclusion of uncertainty properties, their inference is typically intractable,…
Improving efficiency of importance sampler is at the center of research in Monte Carlo methods. While adaptive approach is usually difficult within the Markov Chain Monte Carlo framework, the counterpart in importance sampling can be…
In this paper we propose and discuss variance reduction techniques for the estimation of quantiles of the output of a complex model with random input parameters. These techniques are based on the use of a reduced model, such as a metamodel…