Related papers: Estimating Ratios of Normalizing Constants Using L…
Causal mediation analysis aims to estimate the natural direct and indirect effects under clearly specified assumptions. Traditional mediation analysis based on Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) relies on the absence of unmeasured causes of the…
Importance sampling (IS) is an important technique to reduce the estimation variance in Monte Carlo simulations. In many practical problems, however, the use of IS method may result in unbounded variance, and thus fail to provide reliable…
We propose a nonparametric bootstrap procedure for two-phase stratified sampling without replacement. In this design, a weighted likelihood estimator is known to have smaller asymptotic variance than under the convenient assumption of…
The Adaptive Multiple Importance Sampling (AMIS) algorithm is aimed at an optimal recycling of past simulations in an iterated importance sampling scheme. The difference with earlier adaptive importance sampling implementations like…
The naive importance sampling estimator, based on samples from a single importance density, can be numerically unstable. Instead, we consider generalized importance sampling estimators where samples from more than one probability…
This paper proposes a Bayesian method for estimating the parameters of a normal distribution when only limited summary statistics (sample mean, minimum, maximum, and sample size) are available. To estimate the parameters of a normal…
We consider importance sampling (IS) type weighted estimators based on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) targeting an approximate marginal of the target distribution. In the context of Bayesian latent variable models, the MCMC typically…
We introduce a path sampling method for the computation of rate constants for systems with a highly diffusive character. Based on the recently developed algorithm of transition interface sampling (TIS) this procedure increases the…
A recently introduced Importance Sampling strategy based on a least squares optimization is applied to the Monte Carlo simulation of Libor Market Models. Such Least Squares Importance Sampling (LSIS) allows the automatic optimization of the…
Exploiting stochastic path integral theory, we obtain \emph{by simulation} substantial gains in efficiency for the computation of reaction rates in one-dimensional, bistable, overdamped stochastic systems. Using a well-defined measure of…
Adaptive importance sampling is a widely spread Monte Carlo technique that uses a re-weighting strategy to iteratively estimate the so-called target distribution. A major drawback of adaptive importance sampling is the large variance of the…
We consider the efficient use of an approximation within Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), with subsequent importance sampling (IS) correction of the Markov chain inexact output, leading to asymptotically exact inference. We detail…
Normalizing flows are flexible, parameterized distributions that can be used to approximate expectations from intractable distributions via importance sampling. However, current flow-based approaches are limited on challenging targets where…
Adaptive importance sampling (AIS) uses past samples to update the \textit{sampling policy} $q_t$ at each stage $t$. Each stage $t$ is formed with two steps : (i) to explore the space with $n_t$ points according to $q_t$ and (ii) to exploit…
Understanding systems by forward and inverse modeling is a recurrent topic of research in many domains of science and engineering. In this context, Monte Carlo methods have been widely used as powerful tools for numerical inference and…
Intractable posterior distributions of parameters with intractable normalizing constants depending upon the parameters are known as doubly intractable posterior distributions. The terminology itself indicates that obtaining Bayesian…
In this paper, I proof that Importance Sampling estimates based on dependent sample sets are consistent under certain conditions. This can be used to reduce variance in Bayesian Models with factorizing likelihoods, using sample sets that…
We discuss several algorithms for sampling from unnormalized probability distributions in statistical physics, but using the language of statistics and machine learning. We provide a self-contained introduction to some key ideas and…
Importance sampling (IS) consists in biasing samples from a distribution $f$ towards another distribution $g$. Concretely, given samples $X_i$ from $f$, the IS measure is $$\hat{g}_n = \frac{1}{Z_n}\sum_{i=1}^n \frac{g(X_i)}{f(X_i)}…
We consider Particle Gibbs (PG) as a tool for Bayesian analysis of non-linear non-Gaussian state-space models. PG is a Monte Carlo (MC) approximation of the standard Gibbs procedure which uses sequential MC (SMC) importance sampling inside…