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This paper presents a computationally efficient method for binary classification using Manski's (1975,1985) maximum score model when covariates are discretely distributed and parameters are partially but not point identified. We establish…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-07-29 Joel L. Horowitz , Sokbae Lee

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are generally regarded as the gold standard technique for Bayesian inference. They are theoretically well-understood and conceptually simple to apply in practice. The drawback of MCMC is that in…

Computation · Statistics 2019-07-17 Christopher Nemeth , Paul Fearnhead

We propose novel policy search algorithms in the context of off-policy, batch mode reinforcement learning (RL) with continuous state and action spaces. Given a batch collection of trajectories, we perform off-line policy evaluation using an…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-04-02 Raphael Fonteneau , L. A. Prashanth

This paper introduces a Bayesian framework that combines Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling, dimensionality reduction, and neural density estimation to efficiently handle inverse problems that (i) must be solved multiple times, and…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2026-02-24 Giacomo Bottacini , Matteo Torzoni , Andrea Manzoni

Online solvers for partially observable Markov decision processes have difficulty scaling to problems with large action spaces. Monte Carlo tree search with progressive widening attempts to improve scaling by sampling from the action space…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-11-04 John Mern , Anil Yildiz , Zachary Sunberg , Tapan Mukerji , Mykel J. Kochenderfer

We propose new Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms to sample probability distributions on submanifolds, which generalize previous methods by allowing the use of set-valued maps in the proposal step of the MCMC algorithms. The motivation for…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-10-07 Tony Lelièvre , Gabriel Stoltz , Wei Zhang

Much current research in AI and games is being devoted to Monte Carlo search (MCS) algorithms. While the quest for a single unified MCS algorithm that would perform well on all problems is of major interest for AI, practitioners often know…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2015-03-20 Francis Maes , David Lupien St-Pierre , Damien Ernst

In this paper, we present a multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) version of the Stochastic Gradient (SG) method for optimization under uncertainty, in order to tackle Optimal Control Problems (OCP) where the constraints are described in the form…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-12-30 Matthieu Martin , Fabio Nobile , Panagiotis Tsilifis

Standard planners for sequential decision making (including Monte Carlo planning, tree search, dynamic programming, etc.) are constrained by an implicit sequential planning assumption: The order in which a plan is constructed is the same in…

By analogy with Monte Carlo algorithms, we propose new strategies for design and redesign of small molecule libraries in high-throughput experimentation, or combinatorial chemistry. Several Monte Carlo methods are examined, including…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 Ligang Chen , Michael W. Deem

Computing optimal control policies for complex dynamical systems requires approximation methods to remain computationally tractable. Several approximation methods have been developed to tackle this problem. However, these methods do not…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-03-30 Ashwin Khadke , Hartmut Geyer

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to Bayesian experimental design for non-exchangeable data that formulates it as risk-sensitive policy optimization. We develop the Inside-Out SMC$^2$ algorithm, a nested sequential Monte Carlo…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-30 Sahel Iqbal , Adrien Corenflos , Simo Särkkä , Hany Abdulsamad

In this paper, we present the Monte-Carlo Compressive Optimization algorithm, a new method to solve a combinatorial optimization problem that is assumed compressible. The method relies on random queries to the objective function in order to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-30 Baptiste Chevalier , Shimpei Yamaguchi , Wojciech Roga , Masahiro Takeoka

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are often used for approximate inference inside learning, but their slow mixing can be difficult to diagnose and the approximations can seriously degrade learning. To alleviate these issues, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-02-25 Jacob Steinhardt , Percy Liang

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a popular Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm that generates proposals for a Metropolis-Hastings algorithm by simulating the dynamics of a Hamiltonian system. However, HMC is sensitive to large time…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-09-15 Xiaoyu Lu , Valerio Perrone , Leonard Hasenclever , Yee Whye Teh , Sebastian J. Vollmer

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have not been broadly adopted in Bayesian neural networks (BNNs). This paper initially reviews the main challenges in sampling from the parameter posterior of a neural network via MCMC. Such…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-10-05 Theodore Papamarkou , Jacob Hinkle , M. Todd Young , David Womble

This article introduces the multi-objective adaptive order Caputo fractional gradient descent (MOAOCFGD) algorithm for solving unconstrained multi-objective problems. The proposed method performs equally well for both smooth and non-smooth…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-11 Barsha Shaw , Md Abu Talhamainuddin Ansary

In geostatistics, Gaussian random fields are often used to model heterogeneities of soil or subsurface parameters. To give spatial approximations of these random fields, they are discretized. Then, different techniques of geostatistical…

Computation · Statistics 2021-03-25 Sebastian Reuschen , Fabian Jobst , Wolfgang Nowak

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms play an important role in statistical inference problems dealing with intractable probability distributions. Recently, many MCMC algorithms such as Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) and Riemannian…

Computation · Statistics 2017-04-19 Cheng Zhang , Babak Shahbaba , Hongkai Zhao

We address the problem of finding an optimal policy in a Markov decision process under a restricted policy class defined by the convex hull of a set of base policies. This problem is of great interest in applications in which a number of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-02-28 Ershad Banijamali , Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Nikos Vlassis