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We propose a new framework for Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) on truncated probability distributions with smooth underlying density functions. Traditional HMC requires computing the gradient of potential function associated with the target…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-09-12 Kexin Yi , Finale Doshi-Velez

Inference-time methods that aggregate and prune multiple samples have emerged as a powerful paradigm for steering large language models, yet we lack any principled understanding of their accuracy-cost tradeoffs. In this paper, we introduce…

Scaling test-time computation with reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a reliable path to improve large language models (LLM) reasoning ability. Yet, outcome-based reward often incentivizes models to be overconfident, leading to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Liaoyaqi Wang , Chunsheng Zuo , William Jurayj , Benjamin Van Durme , Anqi Liu

Probabilistic prediction of sequences from images and other high-dimensional data is a key challenge, particularly in risk-sensitive applications. In these settings, it is often desirable to quantify the uncertainty associated with the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-31 Qidong Yang , Weicheng Zhu , Joseph Keslin , Laure Zanna , Tim G. J. Rudner , Carlos Fernandez-Granda

Large language models (LLMs) are susceptible to memorizing training data, raising concerns about the potential extraction of sensitive information at generation time. Discoverable extraction is the most common method for measuring this…

Approximate inference in probabilistic graphical models (PGMs) can be grouped into deterministic methods and Monte-Carlo-based methods. The former can often provide accurate and rapid inferences, but are typically associated with biases…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-01-09 Fredrik Lindsten , Jouni Helske , Matti Vihola

Aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences has become a critical step in their development. Recent research has increasingly focused on test-time alignment, where additional compute is allocated during inference to enhance…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-24 Bolian Li , Yanran Wu , Xinyu Luo , Ruqi Zhang

Monte Carlo (MC) techniques are often used to estimate integrals of a multivariate function using randomly generated samples of the function. In light of the increasing interest in uncertainty quantification and robust design applications…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2011-08-25 Brendan Tracey , David Wolpert , Juan J. Alonso

Large language models (LLMs) have exhibited impressive zero-shot performance on inference tasks. However, LLMs may suffer from spurious correlations between input texts and output labels, which limits LLMs' ability to reason based purely on…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-25 Yingjie Li , Yun Luo , Xiaotian Xie , Yue Zhang

We propose a sampling-based framework for finite-horizon trajectory and policy optimization under differentiable dynamics by casting controller design as inference. Specifically, we minimize a KL-regularized expected trajectory cost, which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Heng Yang

A fundamental characteristic of natural language is the high rate at which speakers produce novel expressions. Because of this novelty, a heavy-tail of rare events accounts for a significant amount of the total probability mass of…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2022-03-25 Benjamin LeBrun , Alessandro Sordoni , Timothy J. O'Donnell

Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) is an inference algorithm for state space models that approximates the posterior by sampling from a sequence of target distributions. The target distributions are often chosen to be the filtering distributions,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Dieterich Lawson , Allan Raventós , Andrew Warrington , Scott Linderman

We build on auto-encoding sequential Monte Carlo (AESMC): a method for model and proposal learning based on maximizing the lower bound to the log marginal likelihood in a broad family of structured probabilistic models. Our approach relies…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-04-06 Tuan Anh Le , Maximilian Igl , Tom Rainforth , Tom Jin , Frank Wood

Restricted Boltzmann Machines are simple and powerful generative models that can encode any complex dataset. Despite all their advantages, in practice the trainings are often unstable and it is difficult to assess their quality because the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-16 Nicolas Béreux , Aurélien Decelle , Cyril Furtlehner , Beatriz Seoane

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is one of the main workhorses of probabilistic inference, but it is notoriously hard to measure the quality of approximate posterior samples. This challenge is particularly salient in black box inference…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-06-08 Roger B. Grosse , Siddharth Ancha , Daniel M. Roy

Large language models (LLMs) trained with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities, but their underlying reward functions and decision-making processes remain opaque. This paper introduces…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Jared Joselowitz , Ritam Majumdar , Arjun Jagota , Matthieu Bou , Nyal Patel , Satyapriya Krishna , Sonali Parbhoo

In this paper, we evaluate the capability of transformer-based language models in making inferences over uncertain text that includes uncertain rules of reasoning. We cover both Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs) and generative Large…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-02-12 Aliakbar Nafar , Kristen Brent Venable , Parisa Kordjamshidi

We study statistical model checking of continuous-time stochastic hybrid systems. The challenge in applying statistical model checking to these systems is that one cannot simulate such systems exactly. We employ the multilevel Monte Carlo…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2017-06-27 Sadegh Esmaeil Zadeh Soudjani , Rupak Majumdar , Tigran Nagapetyan

Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods are a class of Monte Carlo methods that are used to obtain random samples of a high dimensional random variable in a sequential fashion. Many problems encountered in applications often involve different…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-12-20 Chencheng Cai , Rong Chen , Ming Lin

Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods are a widely used set of computational tools for inference in non-linear non-Gaussian state-space models. We propose a new SMC algorithm to compute the expectation of additive functionals recursively.…

Methodology · Statistics 2010-12-27 Pierre Del Moral , Arnaud Doucet , Sumeetpal Singh