Related papers: New Bounds and Truncation Boundaries for Importanc…
Importance sampling is a well developed method in statistics. Given a random variable $X$, the problem of estimating its expected value $\mu$ is addressed. The standard approach is to use the sample mean as an estimator $\bar x$. In…
Importance sampling is a rare event simulation technique used in Monte Carlo simulations to bias the sampling distribution towards the rare event of interest. By assigning appropriate weights to sampled points, importance sampling allows…
We discuss estimating the probability that the sum of nonnegative independent and identically distributed random variables falls below a given threshold, i.e., $\mathbb{P}(\sum_{i=1}^{N}{X_i} \leq \gamma)$, via importance sampling (IS). We…
In rare-event simulation, an importance sampling (IS) estimator is regarded as efficient if its relative error, namely the ratio between its standard deviation and mean, is sufficiently controlled. It is widely known that when a rare-event…
The inefficiency of using an unbiased estimator in a Monte Carlo procedure can be quantified using an inefficiency constant, equal to the product of the variance of the estimator and its mean computational cost. We develop methods for…
This paper presents a novel Importance Sampling (IS) scheme for estimating distribution tails of performance measures modeled with a rich set of tools such as linear programs, integer linear programs, piecewise linear/quadratic objectives,…
Importance sampling (IS) is a powerful Monte Carlo (MC) methodology for approximating integrals, for instance in the context of Bayesian inference. In IS, the samples are simulated from the so-called proposal distribution, and the choice of…
The study further explores randomized QMC (RQMC), which maintains the QMC convergence rate and facilitates computational efficiency analysis. Emphasis is laid on integrating randomly shifted lattice rules, a distinct RQMC quadrature, with…
Off-policy policy estimators that use importance sampling (IS) can suffer from high variance in long-horizon domains, and there has been particular excitement over new IS methods that leverage the structure of Markov decision processes. We…
This paper considers Importance Sampling (IS) for the estimation of tail risks of a loss defined in terms of a sophisticated object such as a machine learning feature map or a mixed integer linear optimisation formulation. Assuming only…
Importance Sampling (IS), an effective variance reduction strategy in Monte Carlo (MC) simulation, is frequently utilized for Bayesian inference and other statistical challenges. Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) replaces the random samples in MC…
This paper investigates asymptotically optimal importance sampling (IS) schemes for pricing European call options under the Heston stochastic volatility model. We focus on two distinct rare-event regimes where standard Monte Carlo methods…
We consider the efficient use of an approximation within Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), with subsequent importance sampling (IS) correction of the Markov chain inexact output, leading to asymptotically exact inference. We detail…
Bayesian methods and their implementations by means of sophisticated Monte Carlo techniques have become very popular in signal processing over the last years. Importance Sampling (IS) is a well-known Monte Carlo technique that approximates…
Among Monte Carlo techniques, the importance sampling requires fine tuning of a proposal distribution, which is now fluently resolved through iterative schemes. The Adaptive Multiple Importance Sampling (AMIS) of Cornuet et al. (2012)…
We describe a simple Importance Sampling strategy for Monte Carlo simulations based on a least squares optimization procedure. With several numerical examples, we show that such Least Squares Importance Sampling (LSIS) provides efficiency…
Importance sampling (IS) and numerical integration methods are usually employed for approximating moments of complicated target distributions. In its basic procedure, the IS methodology randomly draws samples from a proposal distribution…
Evaluating expectations on an Ising model (or Boltzmann machine) is essential for various applications, including statistical machine learning. However, in general, the evaluation is computationally difficult because it involves intractable…
Importance sampling (IS) represents a fundamental technique for a large surge of off-policy reinforcement learning approaches. Policy gradient (PG) methods, in particular, significantly benefit from IS, enabling the effective reuse of…
We consider importance sampling (IS) type weighted estimators based on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) targeting an approximate marginal of the target distribution. In the context of Bayesian latent variable models, the MCMC typically…