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We present a new framework to derandomise certain Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. As in MCMC, we first reduce counting problems to sampling from a sequence of marginal distributions. For the latter task, we introduce a method…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-04-05 Weiming Feng , Heng Guo , Chunyang Wang , Jiaheng Wang , Yitong Yin

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are a very versatile and widely used tool to compute integrals and expectations. In this short survey we focus on error bounds, rules for choosing the burn in, high dimensional problems and…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2014-12-03 Erich Novak , Daniel Rudolf

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

We introduce a gradient-based learning method to automatically adapt Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) proposal distributions to intractable targets. We define a maximum entropy regularised objective function, referred to as generalised speed…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-01-07 Michalis K. Titsias , Petros Dellaportas

In this work, we present, analyze, and implement a class of Multi-Level Markov chain Monte Carlo (ML-MCMC) algorithms based on independent Metropolis-Hastings proposals for Bayesian inverse problems. In this context, the likelihood function…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-05-06 Juan Pablo Madrigal-Cianci , Fabio Nobile , Raul Tempone

The Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm is a powerful Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method that uses Hamiltonian dynamics to generate samples from a target distribution. To fully exploit its potential, we must understand how…

Computation · Statistics 2025-01-27 Abraham Granados , Isaías Bañales

Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) methods for estimating integrals are attractive since the resulting estimators typically converge at a faster rate than pseudo-random Monte Carlo. However, they can be difficult to set up on arbitrary posterior…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2018-10-03 Tobias Schwedes , Ben Calderhead

Using Markov chain Monte Carlo to sample from posterior distributions was the key innovation which made Bayesian data analysis practical. Notoriously, however, MCMC is hard to tune, hard to diagnose, and hard to parallelize. This…

Computation · Statistics 2022-03-18 Cosma Rohilla Shalizi

A challenging problem in probabilistic programming is to develop inference algorithms that work for arbitrary programs in a universal probabilistic programming language (PPL). We present the nonparametric involutive Markov chain Monte Carlo…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-03 Carol Mak , Fabian Zaiser , Luke Ong

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a simulation method commonly used for estimating expectations with respect to a given distribution. We consider estimating the covariance matrix of the asymptotic multivariate normal distribution of a…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-06-06 Ning Dai , Galin L. Jones

The basic question in perturbation analysis of Markov chains is: how do small changes in the transition kernels of Markov chains translate to chains in their stationary distributions? Many papers on the subject have shown, roughly, that the…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-08-13 Na Lin , Yuanyuan Liu , Aaron Smith

A common tool in the practice of Markov Chain Monte Carlo is to use approximating transition kernels to speed up computation when the desired kernel is slow to evaluate or intractable. A limited set of quantitative tools exist to assess the…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-01-14 Jeffrey Negrea , Jeffrey S. Rosenthal

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are indispensable when sampling from a complex, high-dimensional distribution by a conventional method is intractable. Even though MCMC is a powerful tool, it is also hard to control and tune in…

Graphics · Computer Science 2025-10-14 Sascha Holl , Gurprit Singh , Hans-Peter Seidel

A novel class of non-reversible Markov chain Monte Carlo schemes relying on continuous-time piecewise-deterministic Markov Processes has recently emerged. In these algorithms, the state of the Markov process evolves according to a…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-05-16 Paul Vanetti , Alexandre Bouchard-Côté , George Deligiannidis , Arnaud Doucet

Monte Carlo simulations are widely used in many areas including particle accelerators. In this lecture, after a short introduction and reviewing of some statistical backgrounds, we will discuss methods such as direct inversion, rejection…

Computational Physics · Physics 2020-06-19 Ji Qiang

Adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, which automatically tune their parameters based on past samples, have proved extremely useful in practice. The self-tuning mechanism makes them `non-Markovian', which means that their…

Probability · Mathematics 2024-08-28 Pietari Laitinen , Matti Vihola

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are sampling methods that have become a commonly used tool in statistics, for example to perform Monte Carlo integration. As a consequence of the increase in computational power, many variations of…

Computation · Statistics 2021-06-14 F. Din-Houn Lau , Sebastian Krumscheid

Bayesian analysis often concerns an evaluation of models with different dimensionality as is necessary in, for example, model selection or mixture models. To facilitate this evaluation, transdimensional Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-08-13 Daniel W. Heck , Antony M. Overstall , Quentin F. Gronau , Eric-Jan Wagenmakers

A core problem in statistics and probabilistic machine learning is to compute probability distributions and expectations. This is the fundamental problem of Bayesian statistics and machine learning, which frames all inference as…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-12-06 Christian A. Naesseth , Fredrik Lindsten , Thomas B. Schön

Due to its constrained support, the Dirichlet distribution is uniquely suited to many applications. The constraints that make it powerful, however, can also hinder practical implementations, particularly those utilizing Markov Chain Monte…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2015-03-02 M. J. Betancourt