Related papers: On the hardness of sampling independent sets beyon…
It has become increasingly easy nowadays to collect approximate posterior samples via fast algorithms such as variational Bayes, but concerns exist about the estimation accuracy. It is tempting to build solutions that exploit approximate…
We study the hard-core model defined on independent sets, where each independent set I in a graph G is weighted proportionally to $\lambda^{|I|}$, for a positive real parameter $\lambda$. For large $\lambda$, computing the partition…
In the design and analysis of political redistricting maps, it is often useful to be able to sample from the space of all partitions of the graph of census blocks into connected subgraphs of equal population. There are influential Markov…
We study the computational complexity of approximately counting the number of independent sets of a graph with maximum degree Delta. More generally, for an input graph G=(V,E) and an activity lambda>0, we are interested in the quantity…
We determine the computational complexity of approximately counting and sampling independent sets of a given size in bounded-degree graphs. That is, we identify a critical density $\alpha_c(\Delta)$ and provide (i) for $\alpha <…
The maximum independent set problem is a classic optimization problem that has also been studied quite intensively in the distributed setting. While the problem is hard to approximate in general, there are good approximation algorithms…
Gibbs sampling is one of the most popular Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms because of its simplicity, scalability, and wide applicability within many fields of statistics, science, and engineering. In the labeled random finite sets…
We present here two irreversible Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms for general discrete state systems, one of the algorithms is based on the random-scan Gibbs sampler for discrete states and the other on its improved version, the…
A number of algorithms have been developed to solve probabilistic inference problems on belief networks. These algorithms can be divided into two main groups: exact techniques which exploit the conditional independence revealed when the…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are simple and extremely powerful techniques to sample from almost arbitrary distributions. The flaw in practice is that it can take a large and/or unknown amount of time to converge to the…
The hardcore model is a model of lattice gas systems which has received much attention in statistical physics, probability theory and theoretical computer science. It is the probability distribution over independent sets $I$ of a graph…
A Monte-Carlo algorithm for discrete statistical models that combines the full power of the Belief Propagation algorithm with the advantages of a detailed-balanced heat bath approach is presented. A sub-tree inside the factor graph is first…
Uniform sampling from graphical realizations of a given degree sequence is a fundamental component in simulation-based measurements of network observables, with applications ranging from epidemics, through social networks to Internet…
Uncertainty estimation in deep models is essential in many real-world applications and has benefited from developments over the last several years. Recent evidence suggests that existing solutions dependent on simple Gaussian formulations…
We prove that, unless P=NP, there is no polynomial-time algorithm to approximate within some multiplicative constant the average size of an independent set in graphs of maximum degree 6. This is a special case of a more general result for…
Sampling from the lattice Gaussian distribution plays an important role in various research fields. In this paper, the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)-based sampling technique is advanced in several fronts. Firstly, the spectral gap for the…
This paper gives a new algorithm for sampling tree-weighted partitions of a large class of planar graphs. Formally, the tree-weighted distribution on $k$-partitions of a graph weights $k$-partitions proportional to the product of the number…
Bayesian inference of Gibbs random fields (GRFs) is often referred to as a doubly intractable problem, since the likelihood function is intractable. The exploration of the posterior distribution of such models is typically carried out with…
Inference is typically intractable in high-treewidth undirected graphical models, making maximum likelihood learning a challenge. One way to overcome this is to restrict parameters to a tractable set, most typically the set of…
The Griddy Gibbs sampling was proposed by Ritter and Tanner (1992) as a computationally efficient approximation of the well-known Gibbs sampling method. The algorithm is simple and effective and has been used successfully to address…