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Markov chain (MC) algorithms are ubiquitous in machine learning and statistics and many other disciplines. Typically, these algorithms can be formulated as acceptance rejection methods. In this work we present a novel estimator applicable…
This paper introduces a framework for speeding up Bayesian inference conducted in presence of large datasets. We design a Markov chain whose transition kernel uses an (unknown) fraction of (fixed size) of the available data that is randomly…
Importance Sampling methods are broadly used to approximate posterior distributions or some of their moments. In its standard approach, samples are drawn from a single proposal distribution and weighted properly. However, since the…
Bayes factor sensitivity analysis examines how the evidence for one hypothesis over another depends on the prior distribution. In complex models, the standard approach refits the model at each hyper-parameter value, and the total…
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…
Posterior sampling is a task of central importance in Bayesian inference. For many applications in Bayesian meta-analysis and Bayesian transfer learning, the prior distribution is unknown and needs to be estimated from samples. In practice,…
This paper investigates the use of retrospective approximation solution paradigm in solving risk-averse optimization problems effectively via importance sampling (IS). While IS serves as a prominent means for tackling the large sample…
Bayesian model selection enables comparison and ranking of conceptual subsurface models described by spatial prior models, according to the support provided by available geophysical data. Deep generative neural networks can efficiently…
Bayesian inference involves two main computational challenges. First, in estimating the parameters of some model for the data, the posterior distribution may well be highly multi-modal: a regime in which the convergence to stationarity of…
The marginal likelihood is a central tool for drawing Bayesian inference about the number of components in mixture models. It is often approximated since the exact form is unavailable. A bias in the approximation may be due to an incomplete…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling from a posterior distribution corresponding to a massive data set can be computationally prohibitive since producing one sample requires a number of operations that is linear in the data size. In…
Simulated tempering (ST) is an established Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for sampling from a multimodal density $\pi(\theta)$. Typically, ST involves introducing an auxiliary variable $k$ taking values in a finite subset of $[0,1]$…
Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) have received an increased interest in the last years. In BNNs, a complete posterior distribution of the unknown weight and bias parameters of the network is produced during the training stage. This…
We show that for any multiple-try Metropolis algorithm, one can always accept the proposal and evaluate the importance weight that is needed to correct for the bias without extra computational cost. This results in a general, convenient,…
Sparsity has become a key concept for solving of high-dimensional inverse problems using variational regularization techniques. Recently, using similar sparsity-constraints in the Bayesian framework for inverse problems by encoding them in…
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…
We consider the problem of estimating rare event probabilities, focusing on systems whose evolution is governed by differential equations with uncertain input parameters. If the system dynamics is expensive to compute, standard sampling…
Stochastic approximation Monte Carlo (SAMC) has recently been proposed by Liang, Liu and Carroll [J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 102 (2007) 305--320] as a general simulation and optimization algorithm. In this paper, we propose to improve its…
In the field of quality of health care measurement, one approach to assessing patient sickness at admission involves a logistic regression of mortality within 30 days of admission on a fairly large number of sickness indicators (on the…
Intractable posterior distributions of parameters with intractable normalizing constants depending upon the parameters are known as doubly intractable posterior distributions. The terminology itself indicates that obtaining Bayesian…