Related papers: On randomized step sizes in Metropolis-Hastings al…

This work extends Roberts et al. (1997) by considering limits of Random Walk Metropolis (RWM) applied to block IID target distributions, with corresponding block-independent proposals. The extension verifies the robustness of the optimal…

We study the process-level dynamics of Thompson sampling and related sampling-based bandit algorithms in the ``small gap'' regime, where the gaps between the arm means are of order $\sqrt{\gamma}$ or smaller and the time horizon is of order…

We improve the understanding of the $\textit{golden ratio algorithm}$, which solves monotone variational inequalities (VI) and convex-concave min-max problems via the distinctive feature of adapting the step sizes to the local Lipschitz…

In recent times empirical likelihood has been widely applied under Bayesian framework. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are frequently employed to sample from the posterior distribution of the parameters of interest. However,…

Couplings play a central role in the analysis of Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms and appear increasingly often in the algorithms themselves, e.g. in convergence diagnostics, parallelization, and variance reduction techniques. Existing…

We present a comparative study of several algorithms for an in-plane random walk with a variable step. The goal is to check the efficiency of the algorithm in the case where the random walk terminates at some boundary. We recently found…

This paper considers optimization problems over networks where agents have individual objectives to meet, or individual parameter vectors to estimate, subject to subspace constraints that require the objectives across the network to lie in…

This paper discusses the challenges presented by tall data problems associated with Bayesian classification (specifically binary classification) and the existing methods to handle them. Current methods include parallelizing the likelihood,…

This article considers stochastic algorithms for efficiently solving a class of large scale non-linear least squares (NLS) problems which frequently arise in applications. We propose eight variants of a practical randomized algorithm where…

We compare convergence rates of Metropolis--Hastings chains to multi-modal target distributions when the proposal distributions can be of ``local'' and ``small world'' type. In particular, we show that by adding occasional long-range jumps…

We investigate the properties of the Hybrid Monte-Carlo algorithm (HMC) in high dimensions. HMC develops a Markov chain reversible w.r.t. a given target distribution $\Pi$ by using separable Hamiltonian dynamics with potential $-\log\Pi$.…

Distributed stochastic optimization enables multi-agent collaboration in applications such as distributed learning and sensor networks, but also raises critical privacy concerns due to the involvement of sensitive data. While existing…

We give lower bounds on the performance of two of the most popular sampling methods in practice, the Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithm (MALA) and multi-step Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) with a leapfrog integrator, when applied to…

Component-wise MCMC algorithms, including Gibbs and conditional Metropolis-Hastings samplers, are commonly used for sampling from multivariate probability distributions. A long-standing question regarding Gibbs algorithms is whether a…

In this paper, we suggest a new framework for analyzing primal subgradient methods for nonsmooth convex optimization problems. We show that the classical step-size rules, based on normalization of subgradient, or on the knowledge of optimal…

Random embedding has been applied with empirical success to large-scale black-box optimization problems with low effective dimensions. This paper proposes the EmbeddedHunter algorithm, which incorporates the technique in a hierarchical…

Markov chain Monte Carlo methods have become standard tools in statistics to sample from complex probability measures. Many available techniques rely on discrete-time reversible Markov chains whose transition kernels build up over the…

The tuning of stochastic gradient algorithms (SGAs) for optimization and sampling is often based on heuristics and trial-and-error rather than generalizable theory. We address this theory--practice gap by characterizing the large-sample…

This paper considers stochastic weakly convex optimization without the standard Lipschitz continuity assumption. Based on new adaptive regularization (stepsize) strategies, we show that a wide class of stochastic algorithms, including the…

In this paper we consider a distributed optimization scenario in which the aggregate objective function to minimize is partitioned, big-data and possibly non-convex. Specifically, we focus on a set-up in which the dimension of the decision…