Related papers: Perfecting MCMC Sampling: Recipes and Reservations
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are a workhorse of probabilistic modeling and inference, but are difficult to debug, and are prone to silent failure if implemented naively. We outline several strategies for testing the…
An introduction to the use of linchpin variables in Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is provided. Before the widespread adoption of MCMC methods, conditional sampling using linchpin variables was essentially the only practical approach for…
In general, the statistical simulation approaches are referred to as the Monte Carlo methods as a whole. The broad class of the Monte Carlo methods involves the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques that attract the attention of…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) is a class of algorithms that approximate high-dimensional expectations of a Markov chain. SMC algorithms typically include a resampling step. There are many possible ways to resample, but the relative…
In this paper, we consider the Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach for random sampling of combinatorial objects. The running time of such an algorithm depends on the total mixing time of the underlying Markov chain and is unknown in…
In this paper, we present MCBench, a benchmark suite designed to assess the quality of Monte Carlo (MC) samples. The benchmark suite enables quantitative comparisons of samples by applying different metrics, including basic statistical…
We present a new procedure to determine Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs), based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. The aim of this paper is to show that we can replace the standard $\chi^2$ minimization by procedures grounded…
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…
We propose approaches for testing implementations of Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods as well as of general Monte Carlo methods. Based on statistical hypothesis tests, these approaches can be used in a unit testing framework to, for…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is a widely used algorithm design scheme with many applications. To make efficient use of this method, the key step is to prove that the Markov chain is rapid mixing. Canonical paths is one of the two…
The Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm is a widely recognised as an efficient method for sampling a specified posterior distribution. However, when the posterior is multi-modal, conventional MCMC algorithms either tend to become…
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…
Monte Carlo methods -- such as Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and piecewise deterministic Markov process (PDMP) samplers -- provide asymptotically exact estimators of expectations under a target distribution. There is growing interest in…
We introduce a novel time-homogeneous Markov embedding of a class of time inhomogeneous Markov chains widely used in the context of Monte Carlo sampling algorithms which allows us to answer one of the most basic, yet hard, question about…
We introduce interacting particle Markov chain Monte Carlo (iPMCMC), a PMCMC method based on an interacting pool of standard and conditional sequential Monte Carlo samplers. Like related methods, iPMCMC is a Markov chain Monte Carlo sampler…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are ubiquitous tools for simulation-based inference in many fields but designing and identifying good MCMC samplers is still an open question. This paper introduces a novel MCMC algorithm, namely,…
Many recent Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) samplers leverage continuous dynamics to define a transition kernel that efficiently explores a target distribution. In tandem, a focus has been on devising scalable variants that subsample the…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is an invaluable means of inference with complicated models, and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, in particular Riemannian Manifold Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (RMHMC), has demonstrated impressive success in many…
We develop a modular approach to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling for unnormalized target densities. In this approach, Markov chains are constructed in parallel, each constrained to a subset of the target space. The Monte Carlo…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms offer various strategies for sampling; the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) family of samplers are MCMC algorithms which often exhibit improved mixing properties. The recently introduced magnetic HMC,…