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Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are based on the construction of a Markov chain with transition probabilities leaving invariant a probability distribution of interest. In this work, we look at these transition probabilities as…

Probability · Mathematics 2024-10-01 Rocco Caprio , Adam M. Johansen

Suppose that $X_1,X_2,\ldots$ are a stream of independent, identically distributed Poisson random variables with mean $\mu$. This work presents a new estimate $\mu_k$ for $\mu$ with the property that the distribution of the relative error…

Computation · Statistics 2016-06-01 Mark Huber

Exponential random graph models are extremely difficult models to handle from a statistical viewpoint, since their normalising constant, which depends on model parameters, is available only in very trivial cases. We show how inference can…

Applications · Statistics 2010-09-30 Alberto Caimo , Nial Friel

A Gaussian Cox process is a popular model for point process data, in which the intensity function is a transformation of a Gaussian process. Posterior inference of this intensity function involves an intractable integral (i.e., the…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-07-01 Bingjing Tang , Julia Palacios

This work introduces two Monte Carlo (MC)-based sampling methods, known as line sampling and subset simulation, to improve the performance of standard MC analyses in the context of asteroid impact risk assessment. Both techniques sample the…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2020-09-28 Matteo Romano , Matteo Losacco , Camilla Colombo , Pierluigi Di Lizia

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are generally regarded as the gold standard technique for Bayesian inference. They are theoretically well-understood and conceptually simple to apply in practice. The drawback of MCMC is that in…

Computation · Statistics 2019-07-17 Christopher Nemeth , Paul Fearnhead

We propose Kernel Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (KMC), a gradient-free adaptive MCMC algorithm based on Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC). On target densities where classical HMC is not an option due to intractable gradients, KMC adaptively learns…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-11-25 Heiko Strathmann , Dino Sejdinovic , Samuel Livingstone , Zoltan Szabo , Arthur Gretton

We propose a new framework of variance-reduced Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) methods for sampling from an $L$-smooth and $m$-strongly log-concave distribution, based on a unified formulation of biased and unbiased variance reduction…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-10 Zhengmian Hu , Feihu Huang , Heng Huang

Many Bayesian inference problems involve target distributions whose density functions are computationally expensive to evaluate. Replacing the target density with a local approximation based on a small number of carefully chosen density…

Computation · Statistics 2022-07-13 Andrew D. Davis , Youssef Marzouk , Aaron Smith , Natesh Pillai

We propose a multilevel Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for the Bayesian inference of random field parameters in PDEs using high-resolution data. Compared to existing multilevel MCMC methods, we additionally consider level-dependent…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-08-19 Pieter Vanmechelen , Geert Lombaert , Giovanni Samaey

This article reviews the application of advanced Monte Carlo techniques in the context of Multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC). MLMC is a strategy employed to compute expectations which can be biased in some sense, for instance, by using the…

Computation · Statistics 2017-04-25 Ajay Jasra , Kody Law , Carina Suciu

A key quantity of interest in Bayesian inference are expectations of functions with respect to a posterior distribution. Markov Chain Monte Carlo is a fundamental tool to consistently compute these expectations via averaging samples drawn…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-02-10 Heiko Strathmann , Dino Sejdinovic , Mark Girolami

From basic considerations of the Lie group that preserves a target probability measure, we derive the Barker, Metropolis, and ensemble Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, as well as variants of waste-recycling Metropolis-Hastings…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-01-29 Steve Huntsman

Estimating the unknown density from which a given independent sample originates is more difficult than estimating the mean, in the sense that for the best popular non-parametric density estimators, the mean integrated square error converges…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-09-08 Pierre L'Ecuyer , Florian Puchhammer , Amal Ben Abdellah

A simple and stable method for computing accurate expectation values of observable with Variational Monte Carlo (VMC) or Diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) algorithms is presented. The basic idea consists in replacing the usual ``bare'' estimator…

Chemical Physics · Physics 2009-11-10 Roland Assaraf , Michel Caffarel

The Pseudo-Marginal (PM) algorithm is a popular Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method used to sample from a target distribution when its density is inaccessible, but can be estimated with a non-negative unbiased estimator. Its performance…

Computation · Statistics 2025-09-30 Sarra Abaoubida , Mylène Bédard , Florian Maire

In the present paper we examine the effects of noise on Monte Carlo algorithms, a problem raised previously by Kennedy and Kuti (Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 54}, 2473 (1985)). We show that the effects of introducing unbiased noise into the…

chem-ph · Physics 2009-10-22 J. D. Doll , D. L. Freeman

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods provide powerful framework for sampling unknown probability measures across a wide range of scientific applications. In some settings, the target distribution is supported on a lower-dimensional…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-04-27 Xuyuan Wang , Donglin Han

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is widely regarded as one of the most important algorithms of the 20th century. Its guarantees of asymptotic convergence, stability, and estimator-variance bounds using only unnormalized probability functions…

Bayesian inference in the physical sciences faces a fundamental challenge: the imperative for high-fidelity physical modeling often clashes with the intrinsic limitations of stochastic sampling algorithms. Complex, high-dimensional…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2026-04-09 Bo Liang , Chang Liu , Hanlin Song , Tianyu Zhao , Minghui Du , He Wang , Haohao Gu , Sensen He , Yuxiang Xu , Wei-Liang Qian , Li-e Qiang , Peng Xu , Ziren Luo , Mingming Sun