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Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a flexible approach to approximate sampling from intractable probability distributions, with a rich theoretical foundation and comprising a wealth of exemplar algorithms. While the qualitative correctness…

This paper is on Bayesian inference for parametric statistical models that are defined by a stochastic simulator which specifies how data is generated. Exact sampling is then possible but evaluating the likelihood function is typically…

We demonstrate the use of a variational method to determine a quantitative lower bound on the rate of convergence of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms as a function of the target density and proposal density. The bound relies on…

This work explores a novel perspective on solving nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems by leveraging sampling based methods. Instead of treating the objective function purely through traditional (often deterministic) optimization…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are a powerful tool for computation with complex probability distributions. However the performance of such methods is critically dependant on properly tuned parameters, most of which are difficult if…

Statistical machine learning often uses probabilistic algorithms, such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), to solve a wide range of problems. Probabilistic computations, often considered too slow on conventional processors, can be…

Statistical machine learning often uses probabilistic algorithms, such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), to solve a wide range of problems. Many accelerators are proposed using specialized hardware to address sampling inefficiency, the…

Exact approximations of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are a general emerging class of sampling algorithms. One of the main ideas behind exact approximations consists of replacing intractable quantities required to run standard…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are one of the most popular classes of algorithms for sampling from a target probability distribution. A rising trend in recent years consists in analyzing the convergence of MCMC algorithms using…

Inference is typically intractable in high-treewidth undirected graphical models, making maximum likelihood learning a challenge. One way to overcome this is to restrict parameters to a tractable set, most typically the set of…

In this paper, we address the challenge of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms within the approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) framework, which often get trapped in local optima due to their inherent local exploration mechanism. We…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods sample from unnormalized probability distributions and offer guarantees of exact sampling. However, in the continuous case, unfavorable geometry of the target distribution can greatly limit the…

Multimodality of the likelihood in Gaussian mixtures is a well-known problem. The choice of the initial parameter vector for the numerical optimizer may affect whether the optimizer finds the global maximum, or gets trapped in a local…

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…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are routinely used to draw samples from distributions with intractable normalization constants. However, standard MCMC algorithms do not apply to doubly-intractable distributions in which there are…

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…

In this paper, we consider smooth convex optimization problems with simple constraints and inexactness in the oracle information such as value, partial or directional derivatives of the objective function. We introduce a unifying framework,…

Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) aim to handle changing or partially known system dynamics. To solve them, one typically resorts to robust optimization methods. However, this significantly increases computational complexity and…

We introduce a gradient-based learning method to automatically adapt Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) proposal distributions to intractable targets. We define a maximum entropy regularised objective function, referred to as generalised speed…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are often used for approximate inference inside learning, but their slow mixing can be difficult to diagnose and the approximations can seriously degrade learning. To alleviate these issues, we…