Related papers: Convergence of Multi-Level Markov Chain Monte Carl…

Many machine learning problems involve Monte Carlo gradient estimators. As a prominent example, we focus on Monte Carlo variational inference (MCVI) in this paper. The performance of MCVI crucially depends on the variance of its stochastic…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) requires to evaluate the full data likelihood at different parameter values iteratively and is often computationally infeasible for large data sets. In this paper, we propose to approximate the log-likelihood…

This paper investigates methods for estimating the optimal stochastic control policy for a Markov Decision Process with unknown transition dynamics and an unknown reward function. This form of model-free reinforcement learning comprises…

Stochastic gradient Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms are popular samplers for approximate inference, but they are generally biased. We show that many recent versions of these methods (e.g. Chen et al. (2014)) cannot be corrected using…

This article introduces the multi-objective adaptive order Caputo fractional gradient descent (MOAOCFGD) algorithm for solving unconstrained multi-objective problems. The proposed method performs equally well for both smooth and non-smooth…

Adaptive Monte Carlo methods are recent variance reduction techniques. In this work, we propose a mathematical setting which greatly relaxes the assumptions needed by for the adaptive importance sampling techniques presented by Vazquez-Abad…

In this article we develop a new sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) method for multilevel (ML) Monte Carlo estimation. In particular, the method can be used to estimate expectations with respect to a target probability distribution over an…

Adaptive Monte Carlo schemes developed over the last years usually seek to ensure ergodicity of the sampling process in line with MCMC tradition. This poses constraints on what is possible in terms of adaptation. In the general case…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are used to estimate features of interest of a distribution. The Monte Carlo error in estimation has an asymptotic normal distribution whose multivariate nature has so far been ignored in the MCMC…

Bilevel optimization problems are receiving increasing attention in machine learning as they provide a natural framework for hyperparameter optimization and meta-learning. A key step to tackle these problems is the efficient computation of…

This paper considers a new approach to using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) in contexts where one may adopt multilevel (ML) Monte Carlo. The underlying problem is to approximate expectations w.r.t. an underlying probability measure that is…

Stochastic gradient algorithms are the main focus of large-scale optimization problems and led to important successes in the recent advancement of the deep learning algorithms. The convergence of SGD depends on the careful choice of…

Stochastic gradient algorithms have been the main focus of large-scale learning problems and they led to important successes in machine learning. The convergence of SGD depends on the careful choice of learning rate and the amount of the…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is an established approach for uncertainty quantification and propagation in scientific applications. A key challenge in applying MCMC to scientific domains is computation: the target density of interest is…

In this paper we propose several adaptive gradient methods for stochastic optimization. Unlike AdaGrad-type of methods, our algorithms are based on Armijo-type line search and they simultaneously adapt to the unknown Lipschitz constant of…

Atomistic simulations provide valuable insights into the physical processes governing material behavior. However, their applicability is fundamentally constrained by the limited time scales accessible to brute-force simulations. This…

It is commonly admitted that non-reversible Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms usually yield more accurate MCMC estimators than their reversible counterparts. In this note, we show that in addition to their variance reduction…

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…

Quasi-Monte Carlo algorithms are studied for designing discrete approximations of two-stage linear stochastic programs. Their integrands are piecewise linear, but neither smooth nor lie in the function spaces considered for QMC error…

Motivated by broad applications in machine learning, we study the popular accelerated stochastic gradient descent (ASGD) algorithm for solving (possibly nonconvex) optimization problems. We characterize the finite-time performance of this…