We propose a novel approximate inference algorithm that approximates a target distribution by amortising the dynamics of a user-selected MCMC sampler. The idea is to initialise MCMC using samples from an approximation network, apply the MCMC operator to improve these samples, and finally use the samples to update the a…
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48 results for “Approximate MCMC”
Stochastic EM with biased MCMC improves inference stability.
problem Intractable E-step in EM algorithm.
method Stochastic approximation with biased MCMC.
result ULA is more stable and sometimes faster than MALA.
There has been recent interest in developing scalable Bayesian sampling methods such as stochastic gradient MCMC (SG-MCMC) and Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) for big-data analysis. A standard SG-MCMC algorithm simulates samples from a discrete-time Markov chain to approximate a target distribution, thus samp…
Stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SG-MCMC) has been increasingly popular in Bayesian learning due to its ability to deal with large data. A standard SG-MCMC algorithm simulates samples from a discretized-time Markov chain to approximate a target distribution. However, the samples are typically highly correl…
The paper proposes methods to estimate MCMC quality with couplings, bounding Wasserstein distance.
problem Improving MCMC efficiency without sacrificing asymptotic consistency.
method Estimators based on couplings of Markov chains to assess quality of asymptotically biased sampling methods.
result Empirical upper bounds of Wasserstein distance for assessing MCMC quality.
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and Belief Propagation (BP) are the most popular algorithms for computational inference in Graphical Models (GM). In principle, MCMC is an exact probabilistic method which, however, often suffers from exponentially slow mixing. In contrast, BP is a deterministic method, which is typicall…
Variational MCMCcs.LG
We propose a new class of learning algorithms that combines variational approximation and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation. Naive algorithms that use the variational approximation as proposal distribution can perform poorly because this approximation tends to underestimate the true variance and other features…
With the rapidly growing scales of statistical problems, subset based communication-free parallel MCMC methods are a promising future for large scale Bayesian analysis. In this article, we propose a new Weierstrass sampler for parallel MCMC based on independent subsets. The new sampler approximates the full data poster…
The modern scale of data has brought new challenges to Bayesian inference. In particular, conventional MCMC algorithms are computationally very expensive for large data sets. A promising approach to solve this problem is embarrassingly parallel MCMC (EP-MCMC), which first partitions the data into multiple subsets and r…
New method reduces computational cost for Bayesian inference.
problem High computational cost in Bayesian inference.
method Coreset MCMC, a Markov chain targeting coreset posterior.
result Coreset MCMC provides higher quality posterior approximations and reduced computational cost.
Markov-Chain Monte Carlo Approximation of the Ideal Observer using Generative Adversarial Networkseess.SP
The Ideal Observer (IO) performance has been advocated when optimizing medical imaging systems for signal detection tasks. However, analytical computation of the IO test statistic is generally intractable. To approximate the IO test statistic, sampling-based methods that employ Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique…
APINNs use neural networks to solve MCMC problems efficiently.
problem Accurate Bayesian parameter estimation for systems governed by PDEs.
method Construct an offline PINN-UQ model and refine it on the fly using MCMC samples.
result Guaranteed approximation error less than a residual error threshold.
New method for MCMC models without perfect or sequential samplers.
problem Bayesian inference for complex models with intractable terms.
method Utilizes tractable independence model to construct unbiased estimates.
result Scalable method for high-dimensional models.
A new MCMC method combines low and high-fidelity models to reduce computation.
problem Inefficient computation of expensive target densities in scientific applications.
method Pseudo-marginal MCMC approach using a telescoping series of low-fidelity models.
result Asymptotically exact multi-fidelity MCMC algorithms for reduced computational cost.
Improved sampling accuracy in SG-MCMC methods via non-uniform gradient subsampling.
problem Computational inefficiency and sampling error in stochastic gradient MCMC methods.
method Proposes a non-uniform subsampling scheme to reduce sampling error in EWSG, a variant of SG-MCMC.
result EWSG reduces sampling error compared to uniform subsampling, improving accuracy without sacrificing convergence speed.
DPMC improves inverse problem solving with MCMC, reducing error in noisy conditions.
problem Inaccurate posterior approximation in inverse problems with high noise levels.
method DPMC uses Annealed MCMC to sample through a series of intermediate distributions, reducing accumulated error.
result DPMC outperforms DPS in various inverse problems, reducing error and evaluations.
Statistical inference methods are fundamentally important in machine learning. Most state-of-the-art inference algorithms are variants of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) or variational inference (VI). However, both methods struggle with limitations in practice: MCMC methods can be computationally demanding; VI methods …
Two popular classes of methods for approximate inference are Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and variational inference. MCMC tends to be accurate if run for a long enough time, while variational inference tends to give better approximations at shorter time horizons. However, the amount of time needed for MCMC to exceed…
EG-LF-MCMC infers posterior densities without likelihoods.
problem Posterior inference for models with intractable likelihoods.
method Two-phase approach: error recording and classification for MCMC.
result EG-LF-MCMC provides approximate posterior densities efficiently.
Bayesian structure learning improved using GFlowNets.
problem Inferring Bayesian network structure from data.
method Using Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets) for approximating posterior DAG distributions.
result DAG-GFlowNet provides an accurate approximation of the posterior over DAGs.
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a popular and successful general-purpose tool for Bayesian inference. However, MCMC cannot be practically applied to large data sets because of the prohibitive cost of evaluating every likelihood term at every iteration. Here we present Firefly Monte Carlo (FlyMC) an auxiliary variabl…
While MCMC methods have become a main work-horse for Bayesian inference, scaling them to large distributed datasets is still a challenge. Embarrassingly parallel MCMC strategies take a divide-and-conquer stance to achieve this by writing the target posterior as a product of subposteriors, running MCMC for each of them …
Develops variational inference for Neyman-Scott processes for faster sampling.
problem Slow mixing time in MCMC for posterior sampling in Neyman-Scott processes.
method Variational inference algorithm for Neyman-Scott processes, minimizing KL divergence.
result Achieves better prediction performance than MCMC with limited computational time.
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms have become powerful tools for Bayesian inference. However, they do not scale well to large-data problems. Divide-and-conquer strategies, which split the data into batches and, for each batch, run independent MCMC algorithms targeting the corresponding subposterior, can spread…
New MCMC algorithm reduces subset selection passes to 2 for optimal -dimensional subspace approximation.
problem Subset selection for -dimensional subspace approximation with -approximation.
method MCMC sampling algorithm reducing passes to 2 for case, poly(k/ε) size subset.
result Subset selection of nearly optimal size in 2 passes, approximation.
Bayesian learning in undirected graphical models|computing posterior distributions over parameters and predictive quantities is exceptionally difficult. We conjecture that for general undirected models, there are no tractable MCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) schemes giving the correct equilibrium distribution over param…
In Peña (2007), MCMC sampling is applied to approximately calculate the ratio of essential graphs (EGs) to directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) for up to 20 nodes. In the present paper, we extend that work from 20 to 31 nodes. We also extend that work by computing the approximate ratio of connected EGs to connected DAGs, of …
Monte Carlo (MC) methods are widely used for Bayesian inference and optimization in statistics, signal processing and machine learning. A well-known class of MC methods are Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. In order to foster better exploration of the state space, specially in high-dimensional applications, s…
Probabilistic models are conceptually powerful tools for finding structure in data, but their practical effectiveness is often limited by our ability to perform inference in them. Exact inference is frequently intractable, so approximate inference is often performed using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). To achieve the…
New method merges MCMC samples without distributional assumptions.
problem Efficiently merging MCMC samples from disjoint subsets.
method Diffusion generative modelling for density approximation.
result Outperforms existing methods on high-dimensional problems.
The paper models financial returns data with measurement error.
problem Modeling measurement error in financial returns data.
method Develops a stochastic model using a Lévy process and approximates the joint transition density via a stick-breaking representation. Implements MCMC and multilevel MCMC algorithms.
result Provides an approximation and sampling methods for Bayesian parameter estimation of the model.
Proposes MIVI for efficient posterior estimation and design of MCMC transitions.
problem Efficiently estimating posterior distributions in constrained time.
method Combines variational inference and MCMC with a variational distribution and optimized Markov chain.
result Optimized Markov chain improves variational distribution and vice versa, leading to more accurate posteriors.
Traditionally, the field of computational Bayesian statistics has been divided into two main subfields: variational methods and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). In recent years, however, several methods have been proposed based on combining variational Bayesian inference and MCMC simulation in order to improve their ov…
Improved Bayesian computation for imaging problems using a new MCMC method.
problem Challenges in Bayesian computation for imaging inverse problems due to high dimensionality and non-smoothness.
method Introduces a new accelerated proximal MCMC method (ls SK-ROCK) that combines data augmentation and relaxation with proximal MCMC.
result The method converges faster and achieves better accuracy than state-of-the-art approaches.
Accelerates MCMC sampling for large-scale problems using machine learning.
problem Efficiently sampling large-scale Bayesian inference problems with high computational cost.
method Integrates low-fidelity machine learning models into a multilevel MCMC framework.
result Significantly accelerates multilevel sampling by a factor of two with similar accuracy.
Variational inference (VI) and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) are two main approximate approaches for learning deep generative models by maximizing marginal likelihood. In this paper, we propose using annealed importance sampling for learning deep generative models. Our proposed approach bridges VI with MCMC. It gener…
MixFlows uses a mixture of flows for efficient variational inference.
problem Efficient and reliable variational inference for complex models.
method A new variational family of mixed flows with efficient algorithms and convergence guarantees.
result MixFlows provides more reliable posterior approximations and comparable sample quality to MCMC methods.
PriorCVAE uses deep generative models to infer hyperparameters in MCMC.
problem Losing hyperparameter information in GP prior inference.
method Conditioning VAE on hyperparameters to encode and estimate them during inference.
result PriorCVAE enables efficient and distinct inference of hyperparameters.
We propose a stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SG-MCMC) algorithm for scalable inference in mixed-membership stochastic blockmodels (MMSB). Our algorithm is based on the stochastic gradient Riemannian Langevin sampler and achieves both faster speed and higher accuracy at every iteration than the current sta…
New method improves performance of Hamiltonian MCMC for log Z estimation.
problem Estimating tight bounds on log Z for unnormalized distributions.
method Uncorrected Hamiltonian Annealing (UHA) using reparameterization gradients.
result Better performance and easier parameter tuning compared to existing methods.
New model improves MCMC efficiency and multi-modal distribution exploration.
problem Inefficient and slow MCMC methods for complex distributions.
method Deep involutive generative models for Metropolis-Hastings updates.
result Deep involutive models can learn complex MCMC updates efficiently.
For Bayesian computation in big data contexts, the divide-and-conquer MCMC concept splits the whole data set into batches, runs MCMC algorithms separately over each batch to produce samples of parameters, and combines them to produce an approximation of the target distribution. In this article, we embed random forests …
Adding inequality constraints (e.g. boundedness, monotonicity, convexity) into Gaussian processes (GPs) can lead to more realistic stochastic emulators. Due to the truncated Gaussianity of the posterior, its distribution has to be approximated. In this work, we consider Monte Carlo (MC) and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MC…
We introduce a novel approach for parallelizing MCMC inference in models with spatially determined conditional independence relationships, for which existing techniques exploiting graphical model structure are not applicable. Our approach is motivated by a model of seismic events and signals, where events detected in d…
New analysis of SGD with MCMC gradient estimator shows convergence rate and saddle point escape.
problem Analyzing SGD with MCMC gradient estimator under complex conditions.
method Introduced MCMC-SGD, analyzed convergence rate and saddle point escape using Bernstein inequality.
result Proven first order convergence rate and saddle point escape at least steps.
TADDAA improves accuracy diagnostics for variational approximations.
problem Challenges in evaluating the accuracy of variational approximations.
method Uses many short parallel MCMC chains to obtain lower bounds on the error of each posterior functional of interest.
result Validates the practical utility and computational efficiency of TADDAA on various models.
New algorithm reduces privacy breach in posterior sampling.
problem Combining pure DP with MCMC for efficient sampling.
method ASAP algorithm that perturbs MCMC samples with Wasserstein-infinity noise.
result First nearly linear-time algorithm achieving optimal DP-ERM rates.
This paper studies the fundamental problem of learning deep generative models that consist of multiple layers of latent variables organized in top-down architectures. Such models have high expressivity and allow for learning hierarchical representations. Learning such a generative model requires inferring the latent va…