Related papers: Policy Gradients for Optimal Parallel Tempering MC…

In this paper we demonstrate that tempering Markov chain Monte Carlo samplers for Bayesian models by recursively subsampling observations without replacement can improve the performance of baseline samplers in terms of effective sample size…

The replica-exchange Monte-Carlo (RXMC) method is a powerful Markov-chain Monte-Carlo algorithm for sampling from multi-modal distributions, which are challenging for conventional methods. The sampling efficiency of the RXMC method depends…

Parallel tempering and population annealing are both effective methods for simulating equilibrium systems with rough free energy landscapes. Parallel tempering, also known as replica exchange Monte Carlo, is a Markov chain Monte Carlo…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are widely used in machine learning. One of the major problems with MCMC is the question of how to design chains that mix fast over the whole state space; in particular, how to select the parameters…

We propose a new sampler that integrates the protocol of parallel tempering with the Nos\'e-Hoover (NH) dynamics. The proposed method can efficiently draw representative samples from complex posterior distributions with multiple isolated…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are often used in clustering since they guarantee asymptotically exact expectations in the infinite-time limit. In finite time, though, slow mixing often leads to poor performance. Modern computing…

Bayesian inference is useful to obtain a predictive distribution with a small generalization error. However, since posterior distributions are rarely evaluated analytically, we employ the variational Bayesian inference or sampling method to…

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) has become routinely used for sampling from posterior distributions. Its extension Riemann manifold HMC (RMHMC) modifies the proposal kernel through distortion of local distances by a Riemannian metric. The…

This paper considers a new approach to using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) in contexts where one may adopt multilevel (ML) Monte Carlo. The underlying problem is to approximate expectations w.r.t. an underlying probability measure that is…

This paper proposes a new sampling-based nonlinear model predictive control (MPC) algorithm, with a bound on complexity quadratic in the prediction horizon N and linear in the number of samples. The idea of the proposed algorithm is to use…

Binary optimization has a wide range of applications in combinatorial optimization problems such as MaxCut, MIMO detection, and MaxSAT. However, these problems are typically NP-hard due to the binary constraints. We develop a novel…

We explain the fundamental challenges of sampling from multimodal distributions, particularly for high-dimensional problems. We present the major types of MCMC algorithms that are designed for this purpose, including parallel tempering,…

We derive new results comparing the asymptotic variance of diffusions by writing them as appropriate limits of discrete-time birth-death chains which themselves satisfy Peskun orderings. We then apply our results to simulated tempering…

Despite the enormous success of Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and related Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, sampling often still represents the computational bottleneck in scientific applications. Availability of parallel resources can…

In sampling tasks, it is common for target distributions to be known up to a normalizing constant. However, in many situations, even evaluating the unnormalized distribution can be costly or infeasible. This issue arises in scenarios such…

Density tempering (also called density annealing) is a sequential Monte Carlo approach to Bayesian inference for general state models; it is an alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo. When applied to state space models, it moves a…

Multicanonical MCMC (Multicanonical Markov Chain Monte Carlo; Multicanonical Monte Carlo) is discussed as a method of rare event sampling. Starting from a review of the generic framework of importance sampling, multicanonical MCMC is…

In many situations it is important to be able to propose $N$ independent realizations of a given distribution law. We propose a strategy for making $N$ parallel Monte Carlo Markov Chains (MCMC) interact in order to get an approximation of…

A variant of the parallel tempering method is proposed in terms of a stochastic switching process for the coupled dynamics of replica configuration and temperature permutation. This formulation is shown to facilitate the analysis of the…

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…