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Related papers: Neural Control Variates with Automatic Integration

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In statistics and machine learning, approximation of an intractable integration is often achieved by using the unbiased Monte Carlo estimator, but the variances of the estimation are generally high in many applications. Control variates…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-10-16 Ruosi Wan , Mingjun Zhong , Haoyi Xiong , Zhanxing Zhu

We propose neural control variates (NCV) for unbiased variance reduction in parametric Monte Carlo integration. So far, the core challenge of applying the method of control variates has been finding a good approximation of the integrand…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-09-07 Thomas Müller , Fabrice Rousselle , Jan Novák , Alexander Keller

Control variates are a variance-reduction technique for Monte Carlo integration. The principle involves approximating the integrand by a function that can be analytically integrated, and integrating using the Monte Carlo method only the…

Graphics · Computer Science 2025-09-22 Daniel Meister , Takahiro Harada

Control variates are variance reduction tools for Monte Carlo estimators. They can provide significant variance reduction, but usually require a large number of samples, which can be prohibitive when sampling or evaluating the integrand is…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-06-08 Zhuo Sun , Alessandro Barp , François-Xavier Briol

Monte Carlo integration with variance reduction by means of control variates can be implemented by the ordinary least squares estimator for the intercept in a multiple linear regression model with the integrand as response and the control…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-04-02 Rémi Leluc , François Portier , Johan Segers

A non-parametric extension of control variates is presented. These leverage gradient information on the sampling density to achieve substantial variance reduction. It is not required that the sampling density be normalised. The novel…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-04-05 Chris J. Oates , Mark Girolami , Nicolas Chopin

Neural control variates (NCVs) have emerged as a powerful tool for variance reduction in Monte Carlo (MC) simulations, particularly in high-dimensional problems where traditional control variates are difficult to construct analytically. By…

High Energy Physics - Lattice · Physics 2025-08-22 Hyunwoo Oh

The control variates method is a classical variance reduction technique for Monte Carlo estimators that exploits correlated auxiliary variables without introducing bias. In many applications, the quantity of interest can be expressed as a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-11-10 Louison Bocquet-Nouaille , Jérôme Morio , Benjamin Bobbia

Results obtained with stochastic methods have an inherent uncertainty due to the finite number of samples that can be achieved in practice. In lattice QCD this problem is particularly salient in some observables like, for instance,…

High Energy Physics - Lattice · Physics 2025-03-13 Paulo F. Bedaque , Hyunwoo Oh

Many popular statistical models for complex phenomena are intractable, in the sense that the likelihood function cannot easily be evaluated. Bayesian estimation in this setting remains challenging, with a lack of computational methodology…

Computation · Statistics 2015-03-31 Nial Friel , Antonietta Mira , Chris. J. Oates

Control variates are variance reduction techniques for Monte Carlo estimators. They play a critical role in improving Monte Carlo estimators in scientific and machine learning applications that involve computationally expensive integrals.…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-27 Kaiyu Li , Yiming Yang , Xiaoyuan Cheng , Yi He , Zhuo Sun

It is well known that Monte Carlo integration with variance reduction by means of control variates can be implemented by the ordinary least squares estimator for the intercept in a multiple linear regression model. A central limit theorem…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-10-10 François Portier , Johan Segers

In this article we present a method for automatic integration of parametric integrals over the unit hypercube using a neural network. The method fits a neural network to the primitive of the integrand using a loss function designed to…

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Physics 2023-04-12 Daniel Maître , Roi Santos-Mateos

Control variates can be a powerful tool to reduce the variance of Monte Carlo estimators, but constructing effective control variates can be challenging when the number of samples is small. In this paper, we show that when a large number of…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-06-08 Zhuo Sun , Chris J. Oates , François-Xavier Briol

We present an unbiased numerical integration algorithm that handles both low-frequency regions and high frequency details of multidimensional integrals. It combines quadrature and Monte Carlo integration, by using a quadrature-base…

Graphics · Computer Science 2020-08-18 Miguel Crespo , Felix Bernal , Adrian Jarabo , Adolfo Muñoz

Monte Carlo estimation in plays a crucial role in stochastic reaction networks. However, reducing the statistical uncertainty of the corresponding estimators requires sampling a large number of trajectories. We propose control variates…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-10-19 Michael Backenköhler , Luca Bortolussi , Verena Wolf

Adaptive methods are popular within the control literature due to the flexibility and forgiveness they offer in the area of modelling. Neural network adaptive control is favorable specifically for the powerful nature of the machine learning…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-07-23 Nathan Lutes , K. Krishnamurthy , Venkata Sriram Siddhardh Nadendla , S. N. Balakrishnan

In this work, we introduce a control variate approximation technique for low error approximate Deep Neural Network (DNN) accelerators. The control variate technique is used in Monte Carlo methods to achieve variance reduction. Our approach…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-16 Georgios Zervakis , Ourania Spantidi , Iraklis Anagnostopoulos , Hussam Amrouch , Jörg Henkel

Variational inference in Bayesian deep learning often involves computing the gradient of an expectation that lacks a closed-form solution. In these cases, pathwise and score-function gradient estimators are the most common approaches. The…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-10-10 Kenyon Ng , Susan Wei

Flexible variational distributions improve variational inference but are harder to optimize. In this work we present a control variate that is applicable for any reparameterizable distribution with known mean and covariance matrix, e.g.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-26 Tomas Geffner , Justin Domke
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