Related papers: Ergodicity of an Adaptive MCMC Sampler under a Pro…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to sample from a probability distribution $\pi$ defined on a space $(\Theta,\mathcal{T})$ consist of the simulation of realisations of Markov chains $\{\theta_{n},n\geq1\}$ of invariant distribution…
In any Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis, rapid convergence of the chain to its target probability distribution is of practical and theoretical importance. A chain that converges at a geometric rate is geometrically ergodic. In this paper,…
Sampling from posterior distributions using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods can require an exhaustive number of iterations, particularly when the posterior is multi-modal as the MCMC sampler can become trapped in a local mode for a…
We introduce a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm to generate samples from probability distributions supported on a $d$-dimensional lattice $\Lambda = \mathbf{B}\mathbb{Z}^d$, where $\mathbf{B}$ is a full-rank matrix. Specifically,…
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…
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…
Calculating averages with respect to multimodal probability distributions is often necessary in applications. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to this end, which are based on time averages along a realization of a Markov process…
We describe an MCMC method for sampling distributions with soft constraints, which are constraints that are almost but not exactly satisfied. We sample a total distribution that is a convex combination of the target soft distribution with…
In this article, we derive a novel non-reversible, continuous-time Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampler, called Coordinate Sampler, based on a piecewise deterministic Markov process (PDMP), which can be seen as a variant of the Zigzag…
We propose a sequential Markov chain Monte Carlo (SMCMC) algorithm to sample from a sequence of probability distributions, corresponding to posterior distributions at different times in on-line applications. SMCMC proceeds as in usual MCMC…
Bayesian inference with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is challenging when the likelihood function is irregular and expensive to compute. We explore several sampling algorithms that make use of subset evaluations to reduce computational…
The preconditioned Crank-Nicolson (pCN) method is a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) scheme, specifically designed to perform Bayesian inferences in function spaces. Unlike many standard MCMC algorithms, the pCN method can preserve the…
Manifold Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms have been introduced to sample more effectively from challenging target densities exhibiting multiple modes or strong correlations. Such algorithms exploit the local geometry of the parameter…
High-dimensional distributions, especially those with heavy tails, are notoriously difficult for off-the-shelf MCMC samplers: the combination of unbounded state spaces, diminishing gradient information, and local moves results in…
We develop a modular approach to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling for unnormalized target densities. In this approach, Markov chains are constructed in parallel, each constrained to a subset of the target space. The Monte Carlo…
Elliptical slice sampling is a widely used gradient-free Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm that is tuning-free and capable of adapting to local characteristics of the target distribution. However, its primary limitation is that sampling…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms provide a very general recipe for estimating properties of complicated distributions. While their use has become commonplace and there is a large literature on MCMC theory and practice, MCMC users…
We investigate lower bounds on the subgeometric convergence of adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo under any adaptation strategy. In particular, we prove general lower bounds in total variation and on the weak convergence rate under general…
In this work, we study a natural nonparametric estimator of the transition probability matrices of a finite controlled Markov chain. We consider an offline setting with a fixed dataset, collected using a so-called logging policy. We develop…
Standard MCMC methods can scale poorly to big data settings due to the need to evaluate the likelihood at each iteration. There have been a number of approximate MCMC algorithms that use sub-sampling ideas to reduce this computational…