Related papers: Convergence Bounds for Sequential Monte Carlo on M…
In this paper, we propose an efficient pseudo-marginal Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling approach to draw samples from posterior shape distributions for image segmentation. The computation time of the proposed approach is independent…
Monte Carlo experiments produce samples in order to estimate features of a given distribution. However, simultaneous estimation of means and quantiles has received little attention, despite being common practice. In this setting we…
Monte Carlo simulations of systems of particles such as hard spheres or soft spheres with singular kernels can display around a phase transition prohibitively long convergence times when using traditional Hasting-Metropolis reversible…
Bayesian inference allows us to define a posterior distribution over the weights of a generic neural network (NN). Exact posteriors are usually intractable, in which case approximations can be employed. One such approximation - variational…
Numerous capability and safety techniques of Large Language Models (LLMs), including RLHF, automated red-teaming, prompt engineering, and infilling, can be cast as sampling from an unnormalized target distribution defined by a given reward…
As it has become common to use many computer cores in routine applications, finding good ways to parallelize popular algorithms has become increasingly important. In this paper, we present a parallelization scheme for Markov chain Monte…
While multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) methods for the numerical approximation of partial differential equations with random coefficients enjoy great popularity, combinations with spatial adaptivity seem to be rare. We present an adaptive MLMC…
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,…
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…
We propose a hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) technique applicable to high-dimensional multivariate normal distributions that effectively samples along chaotic trajectories. The method is predicated on the freedom of choice of the HMC momentum…
Stochastic gradient Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (SGHMC) is a variant of stochastic gradient with momentum where a controlled and properly scaled Gaussian noise is added to the stochastic gradients to steer the iterates towards a global minimum.…
As sample sizes grow, scalability has become a central concern in the development of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. One general approach to this problem, exemplified by the popular stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (SGLD)…
Stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SG-MCMC) methods are Bayesian analogs to popular stochastic optimization methods; however, this connection is not well studied. We explore this relationship by applying simulated annealing to an…
We consider the computation of the permanent of a binary n by n matrix. It is well- known that the exact computation is a #P complete problem. A variety of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) computational algorithms have been introduced in the…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are algorithms for sampling probability distributions, commonly applied to the Boltzmann distribution in physical and chemical models such as protein folding and the Ising model. These methods enable…
Sampling from distributions play a crucial role in aiding practitioners with statistical inference. However, in numerous situations, obtaining exact samples from complex distributions is infeasible. Consequently, researchers often turn to…
When working with multimodal Bayesian posterior distributions, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms have difficulty moving between modes, and default variational or mode-based approximate inferences will understate posterior…
This paper introduces the R package sgmcmc; which can be used for Bayesian inference on problems with large datasets using stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SGMCMC). Traditional Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, such as…
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…
Strongly log-concave (SLC) distributions are a rich class of discrete probability distributions over subsets of some ground set. They are strictly more general than strongly Rayleigh (SR) distributions such as the well-known determinantal…