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On the ergodicity properties of some adaptive MCMC algorithms

Probability 2016-08-16 v1

Abstract

In this paper we study the ergodicity properties of some adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms (MCMC) that have been recently proposed in the literature. We prove that under a set of verifiable conditions, ergodic averages calculated from the output of a so-called adaptive MCMC sampler converge to the required value and can even, under more stringent assumptions, satisfy a central limit theorem. We prove that the conditions required are satisfied for the independent Metropolis--Hastings algorithm and the random walk Metropolis algorithm with symmetric increments. Finally, we propose an application of these results to the case where the proposal distribution of the Metropolis--Hastings update is a mixture of distributions from a curved exponential family.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0610317,
  title  = {On the ergodicity properties of some adaptive MCMC algorithms},
  author = {Christophe Andrieu and Éric Moulines},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0610317},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/105051606000000286 in the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org)

R2 v1 2026-07-22T17:43:59.039Z