Related papers: Stein $\Pi$-Importance Sampling
We make two closely related theoretical contributions to the use of importance sampling schemes. First, for independent sampling, we prove that the minimax optimal trial distribution coincides with the target if and only if the target…
Large deviation theory has provided important clues for the choice of importance sampling measures for Monte Carlo evaluation of exceedance probabilities. However, Glasserman and Wang [Ann. Appl. Probab. 7 (1997) 731--746] have given…
In this paper, we present a novel iterative Monte Carlo method for approximating the stationary probability of a single state of a positive recurrent Markov chain. We utilize the characterization that the stationary probability of a state…
We present a new statistical test to detect that a presented state of a reversible Markov chain was not chosen from a stationary distribution. In particular, given a value function for the states of the Markov chain, we would like to…
Bayesian inference under a set of priors, called robust Bayesian analysis, allows for estimation of parameters within a model and quantification of epistemic uncertainty in quantities of interest by bounded (or imprecise) probability.…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are widely used in machine learning. One of the major problems with MCMC is the question of how to design chains that mix fast over the whole state space; in particular, how to select the parameters…
In this paper a new estimator for the transition density $\pi$ of an homogeneous Markov chain is considered. We introduce an original contrast derived from regression framework and we use a model selection method to estimate $\pi$ under…
The Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are popular when considering sampling from a high-dimensional random variable $\mathbf{x}$ with possibly unnormalised probability density $p$ and observed data $\mathbf{d}$. However, MCMC requires…
Adaptive importance sampling is a widely spread Monte Carlo technique that uses a re-weighting strategy to iteratively estimate the so-called target distribution. A major drawback of adaptive importance sampling is the large variance of the…
We consider the problem of scalable sampling algorithms to fit Bayesian generalized linear mixed models on large datasets. Stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics, coupled with smooth re-parameterizations of variance parameters, produces…
We propose a method to efficiently integrate truncated probability densities. The method uses Markov chain Monte Carlo method to sample from a probability density matching the function being integrated. The required normalisation or…
A fundamental challenge in Bayesian inference is efficient representation of a target distribution. Many non-parametric approaches do so by sampling a large number of points using variants of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). We propose an…
As the number of samples and dimensionality of optimization problems related to statistics an machine learning explode, block coordinate descent algorithms have gained popularity since they reduce the original problem to several smaller…
Decision making for dynamic systems is challenging due to the scale and dynamicity of such systems, and it is comprised of decisions at strategic, tactical, and operational levels. One of the most important aspects of decision making is…
We propose parameter optimization techniques for weighted ensemble sampling of Markov chains in the steady-state regime. Weighted ensemble consists of replicas of a Markov chain, each carrying a weight, that are periodically resampled…
Slice sampling is a well-established Markov chain Monte Carlo method for (approximate) sampling of target distributions which are only known up to a normalizing constant. The method is based on choosing a new state on a slice, i.e., a…
Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are often deemed too computationally intensive to be of any practical use for big data applications, and in particular for inference on datasets containing a large number $n$ of individual data points, also…
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…
Stochastic gradient Markov Chain Monte Carlo (SGMCMC) is considered the gold standard for Bayesian inference in large-scale models, such as Bayesian neural networks. Since practitioners face speed versus accuracy tradeoffs in these models,…
This paper proposes a new Sequential Monte Carlo algorithm to perform online estimation in the context of state space models when either the transition density of the latent state or the conditional likelihood of an observation given a…