Related papers: Parallelizable Feynman-Kac Models for Universal Pr…
We propose a new method to approximate the posterior distribution of probabilistic programs by means of computing guaranteed bounds. The starting point of our work is an interval-based trace semantics for a recursive, higher-order…
Computing the posterior distribution of a probabilistic program is a hard task for which no one-fit-for-all solution exists. We propose Gaussian Semantics, which approximates the exact probabilistic semantics of a bounded program by means…
The analogy between determinantal point processes (DPPs) and free fermionic calculi is well-known. We point out that, from the perspective of free fermionic algebras, Pfaffian point processes (PfPPs) naturally emerge, and show that a…
Universal probabilistic programming systems (PPSs) provide a powerful framework for specifying rich probabilistic models. They further attempt to automate the process of drawing inferences from these models, but doing this successfully is…
Many practical techniques for probabilistic inference require a sequence of distributions that interpolate between a tractable distribution and an intractable distribution of interest. Usually, the sequences used are simple, e.g., based on…
Probabilistic programming is a programming paradigm for expressing flexible probabilistic models. Implementations of probabilistic programming languages employ a variety of inference algorithms, where sequential Monte Carlo methods are…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) algorithms were originally designed for estimating intractable conditional expectations within state-space models, but are now routinely used to generate approximate samples in the context of general-purpose…
It is natural for probabilistic programs to use conditionals to express alternative substructures in models, and loops (recursion) to express repeated substructures in models. Thus, probabilistic programs with conditionals and recursion…
This paper addresses the issue of estimating the expectation of a real-valued random variable of the form $X = g(\mathbf{U})$ where $g$ is a deterministic function and $\mathbf{U}$ can be a random finite- or infinite-dimensional vector.…
Given a graphical model (GM), computing its partition function is the most essential inference task, but it is computationally intractable in general. To address the issue, iterative approximation algorithms exploring certain local…
The Feynman-Kac formulae (FKF) express local solutions of partial differential equations (PDEs) as expectations with respect to some complementary stochastic differential equation (SDE). Repeatedly sampling paths from the complementary SDE…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods, also known as particle filters, constitute a class of algorithms used to approximate expectations with respect to a sequence of probability distributions as well as the normalising constants of those…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) is a class of algorithms that approximate high-dimensional expectations of a Markov chain. SMC algorithms typically include a resampling step. There are many possible ways to resample, but the relative…
By formulating the inverse problem of partial differential equations (PDEs) as a statistical inference problem, the Bayesian approach provides a general framework for quantifying uncertainties. In the inverse problem of PDEs, parameters are…
This book is a graduate-level introduction to probabilistic programming. It not only provides a thorough background for anyone wishing to use a probabilistic programming system, but also introduces the techniques needed to design and build…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC), or particle filtering, is a popular class of methods for sampling from an intractable target distribution using a sequence of simpler intermediate distributions. Like other importance sampling-based methods,…
We study structural aspects of randomized parameterized computation. We introduce a new class ${\sf W[P]}$-${\sf PFPT}$ as a natural parameterized analogue of ${\sf PP}$. Our definition uses the machine based characterization of the…
The paper is devoted to the construction of a probabilistic particle algorithm. This is related to nonlin-ear forward Feynman-Kac type equation, which represents the solution of a nonconservative semilinear parabolic Partial Differential…
We introduce a new setting, the category of $\omega$PAP spaces, for reasoning denotationally about expressive differentiable and probabilistic programming languages. Our semantics is general enough to assign meanings to most practical…
Differentiable programming has emerged as a key programming paradigm empowering rapid developments of deep learning while its applications to important computational methods such as Monte Carlo remain largely unexplored. Here we present the…