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10,800
Construction of Bayesian Deformable Models via Stochastic Approximation Algorithm: A Convergence Study
stat.CO
The problem of the definition and the estimation of generative models based on deformable templates from raw data is of particular importance for modelling non aligned data affected by various types of geometrical variability. This is especially true in shape modelling in the computer vision community or in probabilist...
statistics
10,801
The random Tukey depth
stat.CO
The computation of the Tukey depth, also called halfspace depth, is very demanding, even in low dimensional spaces, because it requires the consideration of all possible one-dimensional projections. In this paper we propose a random depth which approximates the Tukey depth. It only takes into account a finite number of...
statistics
10,802
Deconvolution by simulation
stat.CO
Given samples (x_1,...,x_m) and (z_1,...,z_n) which we believe are independent realizations of random variables X and Z respectively, where we further believe that Z=X+Y with Y independent of X, the problem is to estimate the distribution of Y. We present a new method for doing this, involving simulation. Experiments s...
statistics
10,803
Parallel marginalization Monte Carlo with applications to conditional path sampling
stat.CO
Monte Carlo sampling methods often suffer from long correlation times. Consequently, these methods must be run for many steps to generate an independent sample. In this paper a method is proposed to overcome this difficulty. The method utilizes information from rapidly equilibrating coarse Markov chains that sample mar...
statistics
10,804
On The Density Estimation by Super-Parametric Method
stat.CO
The super-parametric density estimators and its related algorism were suggested by Y. -S. Tsai et al [7]. The number of parameters is unlimited in the super- parametric estimators and it is a general theory in sense of unifying or connecting nonparametric and parametric estimators. Before applying to numerical examples...
statistics
10,805
Adaptive Importance Sampling in General Mixture Classes
stat.CO
In this paper, we propose an adaptive algorithm that iteratively updates both the weights and component parameters of a mixture importance sampling density so as to optimise the importance sampling performances, as measured by an entropy criterion. The method is shown to be applicable to a wide class of importance samp...
statistics
10,806
Particle Filters for Multiscale Diffusions
stat.CO
We consider multiscale stochastic systems that are partially observed at discrete points of the slow time scale. We introduce a particle filter that takes advantage of the multiscale structure of the system to efficiently approximate the optimal filter.
statistics
10,807
An Elegant Method for Generating Multivariate Poisson Random Variable
stat.CO
Generating multivariate Poisson data is essential in many applications. Current simulation methods suffer from limitations ranging from computational complexity to restrictions on the structure of the correlation matrix. We propose a computationally efficient and conceptually appealing method for generating multivariat...
statistics
10,808
Population-Based Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo
stat.CO
In this paper we present an extension of population-based Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to the trans-dimensional case. One of the main challenges in MCMC-based inference is that of simulating from high and trans-dimensional target measures. In such cases, MCMC methods may not adequately traverse the support of the ta...
statistics
10,809
A statistical analysis of probabilistic counting algorithms
stat.CO
This paper considers the problem of cardinality estimation in data stream applications. We present a statistical analysis of probabilistic counting algorithms, focusing on two techniques that use pseudo-random variates to form low-dimensional data sketches. We apply conventional statistical methods to compare probabili...
statistics
10,810
Efficient l_{alpha} Distance Approximation for High Dimensional Data Using alpha-Stable Projection
stat.CO
In recent years, large high-dimensional data sets have become commonplace in a wide range of applications in science and commerce. Techniques for dimension reduction are of primary concern in statistical analysis. Projection methods play an important role. We investigate the use of projection algorithms that exploit pr...
statistics
10,811
On variance stabilisation by double Rao-Blackwellisation
stat.CO
Population Monte Carlo has been introduced as a sequential importance sampling technique to overcome poor fit of the importance function. In this paper, we compare the performances of the original Population Monte Carlo algorithm with a modified version that eliminates the influence of the transition particle via a dou...
statistics
10,812
The adjusted Viterbi training for hidden Markov models
stat.CO
The EM procedure is a principal tool for parameter estimation in the hidden Markov models. However, applications replace EM by Viterbi extraction, or training (VT). VT is computationally less intensive, more stable and has more of an intuitive appeal, but VT estimation is biased and does not satisfy the following fixed...
statistics
10,813
A practical procedure to find matching priors for frequentist inference
stat.CO
In the manuscript, we present a practical way to find the matching priors proposed by Welch & Peers (1963) and Peers (1965). We investigate the use of saddlepoint approximations combined with matching priors and obtain p-values of the test of an interest parameter in the presence of nuisance parameter. The advantage of...
statistics
10,814
Confidence regions for the multinomial parameter with small sample size
stat.CO
Consider the observation of n iid realizations of an experiment with d>1 possible outcomes, which corresponds to a single observation of a multinomial distribution M(n,p) where p is an unknown discrete distribution on {1,...,d}. In many applications, the construction of a confidence region for p when n is small is cruc...
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10,815
Adaptive approximate Bayesian computation
stat.CO
Sequential techniques can enhance the efficiency of the approximate Bayesian computation algorithm, as in Sisson et al.'s (2007) partial rejection control version. While this method is based upon the theoretical works of Del Moral et al. (2006), the application to approximate Bayesian computation results in a bias in t...
statistics
10,816
A note on the ABC-PRC algorithm of Sissons et al. (2007)
stat.CO
This note describes the results of some tests of the ABC-PRC algorithm of Sissons et al. (PNAS, 2007), and demonstrates with a toy example that the method does not converge on the true posterior distribution.
statistics
10,817
Marginal Likelihood Integrals for Mixtures of Independence Models
stat.CO
Inference in Bayesian statistics involves the evaluation of marginal likelihood integrals. We present algebraic algorithms for computing such integrals exactly for discrete data of small sample size. Our methods apply to both uniform priors and Dirichlet priors. The underlying statistical models are mixtures of indepen...
statistics
10,818
Case-deletion importance sampling estimators: Central limit theorems and related results
stat.CO
Case-deleted analysis is a popular method for evaluating the influence of a subset of cases on inference. The use of Monte Carlo estimation strategies in complicated Bayesian settings leads naturally to the use of importance sampling techniques to assess the divergence between full-data and case-deleted posteriors and ...
statistics
10,819
A randomized algorithm for principal component analysis
stat.CO
Principal component analysis (PCA) requires the computation of a low-rank approximation to a matrix containing the data being analyzed. In many applications of PCA, the best possible accuracy of any rank-deficient approximation is at most a few digits (measured in the spectral norm, relative to the spectral norm of the...
statistics
10,820
Improved Sequential Stopping Rule for Monte Carlo Simulation
stat.CO
This paper presents an improved result on the negative-binomial Monte Carlo technique analyzed in a previous paper for the estimation of an unknown probability p. Specifically, the confidence level associated to a relative interval [p/\mu_2, p\mu_1], with \mu_1, \mu_2 > 1, is proved to exceed its asymptotic value for a...
statistics
10,821
Smooth supersaturated models
stat.CO
In areas such as kernel smoothing and non-parametric regression there is emphasis on smooth interpolation and smooth statistical models. Splines are known to have optimal smoothness properties in one and higher dimensions. It is shown, with special attention to polynomial models, that smooth interpolators can be constr...
statistics
10,822
Generalised linear mixed model analysis via sequential Monte Carlo sampling
stat.CO
We present a sequential Monte Carlo sampler algorithm for the Bayesian analysis of generalised linear mixed models (GLMMs). These models support a variety of interesting regression-type analyses, but performing inference is often extremely difficult, even when using the Bayesian approach combined with Markov chain Mont...
statistics
10,823
An Algorithm for Unconstrained Quadratically Penalized Convex Optimization
stat.CO
A descent algorithm, "Quasi-Quadratic Minimization with Memory" (QQMM), is proposed for unconstrained minimization of the sum, $F$, of a non-negative convex function, $V$, and a quadratic form. Such problems come up in regularized estimation in machine learning and statistics. In addition to values of $F$, QQMM require...
statistics
10,824
Grapham: Graphical Models with Adaptive Random Walk Metropolis Algorithms
stat.CO
Recently developed adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have been applied successfully to many problems in Bayesian statistics. Grapham is a new open source implementation covering several such methods, with emphasis on graphical models for directed acyclic graphs. The implemented algorithms include the sem...
statistics
10,825
A Fast Algorithm for Robust Regression with Penalised Trimmed Squares
stat.CO
The presence of groups containing high leverage outliers makes linear regression a difficult problem due to the masking effect. The available high breakdown estimators based on Least Trimmed Squares often do not succeed in detecting masked high leverage outliers in finite samples. An alternative to the LTS estimator,...
statistics
10,826
On the Permutation Distribution of Independence Tests
stat.CO
One of the most popular class of tests for independence between two random variables is the general class of rank statistics which are invariant under permutations. This class contains Spearman's coefficient of rank correlation statistic, Fisher-Yates statistic, weighted Mann statistic and others. Under the null hypoth...
statistics
10,827
A Gibbs Sampling Alternative to Reversible Jump MCMC
stat.CO
This note presents a simple and elegant sampler which could be used as an alternative to the reversible jump MCMC methodology.
statistics
10,828
A Mixture-Based Approach to Regional Adaptation for MCMC
stat.CO
Recent advances in adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo (AMCMC) include the need for regional adaptation in situations when the optimal transition kernel is different across different regions of the sample space. Motivated by these findings, we propose a mixture-based approach to determine the partition needed for regiona...
statistics
10,829
Least-Squares Joint Diagonalization of a matrix set by a congruence transformation
stat.CO
The approximate joint diagonalization (AJD) is an important analytic tool at the base of numerous independent component analysis (ICA) and other blind source separation (BSS) methods, thus finding more and more applications in medical imaging analysis. In this work we present a new AJD algorithm named SDIAG (Spheric Di...
statistics
10,830
Generalized Rejection Sampling Schemes and Applications in Signal Processing
stat.CO
Bayesian methods and their implementations by means of sophisticated Monte Carlo techniques, such as Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and particle filters, have become very popular in signal processing over the last years. However, in many problems of practical interest these techniques demand procedures for sampling fr...
statistics
10,831
Computation of confidence intervals in regression utilizing uncertain prior information
stat.CO
We consider a linear regression model with regression parameter beta =(beta_1, ..., beta_p) and independent and identically N(0, sigma^2)distributed errors. Suppose that the parameter of interest is theta = a^T beta where a is a specified vector. Define the parameter tau = c^T beta - t where the vector c and the number...
statistics
10,832
On the utility of graphics cards to perform massively parallel simulation of advanced Monte Carlo methods
stat.CO
We present a case-study on the utility of graphics cards to perform massively parallel simulation of advanced Monte Carlo methods. Graphics cards, containing multiple Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), are self-contained parallel computational devices that can be housed in conventional desktop and laptop computers. For ...
statistics
10,833
A Dynamic Programming Approach for Approximate Uniform Generation of Binary Matrices with Specified Margins
stat.CO
Consider the collection of all binary matrices having a specific sequence of row and column sums and consider sampling binary matrices uniformly from this collection. Practical algorithms for exact uniform sampling are not known, but there are practical algorithms for approximate uniform sampling. Here it is shown how ...
statistics
10,834
Reduction algorithm for the NPMLE for the distribution function of bivariate interval censored data
stat.CO
We study computational aspects of the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator (NPMLE) for the distribution function of bivariate interval censored data. The computation of the NPMLE consists of two steps: a parameter reduction step and an optimization step. In this paper we focus on the reduction step. We introduce ...
statistics
10,835
Information geometry for testing pseudorandom number generators
stat.CO
The information geometry of the 2-manifold of gamma probability density functions provides a framework in which pseudorandom number generators may be evaluated using a neighbourhood of the curve of exponential density functions. The process is illustrated using the pseudorandom number generator in Mathematica. This met...
statistics
10,836
Statistical estimation requires unbounded memory
stat.CO
We investigate the existence of bounded-memory consistent estimators of various statistical functionals. This question is resolved in the negative in a rather strong sense. We propose various bounded-memory approximations, using techniques from automata theory and stochastic processes. Some questions of potential inter...
statistics
10,837
A Numerical Approach to Performance Analysis of Quickest Change-Point Detection Procedures
stat.CO
For the most popular sequential change detection rules such as CUSUM, EWMA, and the Shiryaev-Roberts test, we develop integral equations and a concise numerical method to compute a number of performance metrics, including average detection delay and average time to false alarm. We pay special attention to the Shiryaev-...
statistics
10,838
Simulating Events of Unknown Probabilities via Reverse Time Martingales
stat.CO
Assume that one aims to simulate an event of unknown probability $s\in (0,1)$ which is uniquely determined, however only its approximations can be obtained using a finite computational effort. Such settings are often encountered in statistical simulations. We consider two specific examples. First, the exact simulation ...
statistics
10,839
Computational methods for Bayesian model choice
stat.CO
In this note, we shortly survey some recent approaches on the approximation of the Bayes factor used in Bayesian hypothesis testing and in Bayesian model choice. In particular, we reassess importance sampling, harmonic mean sampling, and nested sampling from a unified perspective.
statistics
10,840
Numerical Comparison of Cusum and Shiryaev-Roberts Procedures for Detecting Changes in Distributions
stat.CO
The CUSUM procedure is known to be optimal for detecting a change in distribution under a minimax scenario, whereas the Shiryaev-Roberts procedure is optimal for detecting a change that occurs at a distant time horizon. As a simpler alternative to the conventional Monte Carlo approach, we propose a numerical method for...
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10,841
Monte Carlo Methods in Statistics
stat.CO
Monte Carlo methods are now an essential part of the statistician's toolbox, to the point of being more familiar to graduate students than the measure theoretic notions upon which they are based! We recall in this note some of the advances made in the design of Monte Carlo techniques towards their use in Statistics, re...
statistics
10,842
Probability matrices, non-negative rank, and parameterizations of mixture models
stat.CO
In this paper we parameterize non-negative matrices of sum one and rank at most two. More precisely, we give a family of parameterizations using the least possible number of parameters. We also show how these parameterizations relate to a class of statistical models, known in Probability and Statistics as mixture model...
statistics
10,843
Likelihood-free Bayesian inference for alpha-stable models
stat.CO
$\alpha$-stable distributions are utilised as models for heavy-tailed noise in many areas of statistics, finance and signal processing engineering. However, in general, neither univariate nor multivariate $\alpha$-stable models admit closed form densities which can be evaluated pointwise. This complicates the inferen...
statistics
10,844
Adaptive Gibbs samplers
stat.CO
We consider various versions of adaptive Gibbs and Metropolis within-Gibbs samplers, which update their selection probabilities (and perhaps also their proposal distributions) on the fly during a run, by learning as they go in an attempt to optimise the algorithm. We present a cautionary example of how even a simple-se...
statistics
10,845
Measures of Analysis of Time Series (MATS): A MATLAB Toolkit for Computation of Multiple Measures on Time Series Data Bases
stat.CO
In many applications, such as physiology and finance, large time series data bases are to be analyzed requiring the computation of linear, nonlinear and other measures. Such measures have been developed and implemented in commercial and freeware softwares rather selectively and independently. The Measures of Analysis o...
statistics
10,846
Covariance-Adaptive Slice Sampling
stat.CO
We describe two slice sampling methods for taking multivariate steps using the crumb framework. These methods use the gradients at rejected proposals to adapt to the local curvature of the log-density surface, a technique that can produce much better proposals when parameters are highly correlated. We evaluate our meth...
statistics
10,847
Graphics Processing Units and High-Dimensional Optimization
stat.CO
This paper discusses the potential of graphics processing units (GPUs) in high-dimensional optimization problems. A single GPU card with hundreds of arithmetic cores can be inserted in a personal computer and dramatically accelerates many statistical algorithms. To exploit these devices fully, optimization algorithms s...
statistics
10,848
Computational Methods in Bayesian Statistics
stat.CO
This paper focuses on utilizing two different Bayesian methods to deal with a variety of toy problems which occur in data analysis. In particular we implement the Variational Bayesian and Nested Sampling methods to tackle the problems of polynomial selection and Gaussian Mixture Models, comparing the algorithms in term...
statistics
10,849
Ideal-Theoretic Strategies for Asymptotic Approximation of Marginal Likelihood Integrals
stat.CO
The accurate asymptotic evaluation of marginal likelihood integrals is a fundamental problem in Bayesian statistics. Following the approach introduced by Watanabe, we translate this into a problem of computational algebraic geometry, namely, to determine the real log canonical threshold of a polynomial ideal, and we pr...
statistics
10,850
An empirical Bayes procedure for the selection of Gaussian graphical models
stat.CO
A new methodology for model determination in decomposable graphical Gaussian models is developed. The Bayesian paradigm is used and, for each given graph, a hyper inverse Wishart prior distribution on the covariance matrix is considered. This prior distribution depends on hyper-parameters. It is well-known that the mod...
statistics
10,851
Maximin design on non hypercube domain and kernel interpolation
stat.CO
In the paradigm of computer experiments, the choice of an experimental design is an important issue. When no information is available about the black-box function to be approximated, an exploratory design have to be used. In this context, two dispersion criteria are usually considered: the minimax and the maximin ones....
statistics
10,852
A pruned dynamic programming algorithm to recover the best segmentations with $1$ to $K_{max}$ change-points
stat.CO
A common computational problem in multiple change-point models is to recover the segmentations with $1$ to $K_{max}$ change-points of minimal cost with respect to some loss function. Here we present an algorithm to prune the set of candidate change-points which is based on a functional representation of the cost of seg...
statistics
10,853
Optimally Robust Kalman Filtering at Work: AO-, IO-, and Simultaneously IO- and AO- Robust Filters
stat.CO
We take up optimality results for robust Kalman filtering from Ruckdeschel[2001,2010] where robustness is understood in a distributional sense, i.e.; we enlarge the distribution assumptions made in the ideal model by suitable neighborhoods, allowing for outliers which in our context may be system-endogenous/propagating...
statistics
10,854
Exact posterior distributions over the segmentation space and model selection for multiple change-point detection problems
stat.CO
In segmentation problems, inference on change-point position and model selection are two difficult issues due to the discrete nature of change-points. In a Bayesian context, we derive exact, non-asymptotic, explicit and tractable formulae for the posterior distribution of variables such as the number of change-points o...
statistics
10,855
An Adaptive Sequential Monte Carlo Sampler
stat.CO
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods are not only a popular tool in the analysis of state space models, but offer an alternative to MCMC in situations where Bayesian inference must proceed via simulation. This paper introduces a new SMC method that uses adaptive MCMC kernels for particle dynamics. The proposed algorith...
statistics
10,856
Efficient computation of the cdf of the maximal difference between Brownian bridge and its concave majorant
stat.CO
In this paper, we describe two computational methods for calculating the cumulative distribution function and the upper quantiles of the maximal difference between a Brownian bridge and its concave majorant. The first method has two different variants that are both based on a Monte Carlo approach, whereas the second us...
statistics
10,857
Sequential Monte Carlo Methods for Option Pricing
stat.CO
In the following paper we provide a review and development of sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods for option pricing. SMC are a class of Monte Carlo-based algorithms, that are designed to approximate expectations w.r.t a sequence of related probability measures. These approaches have been used, successfully, for a wid...
statistics
10,858
A simple and efficient algorithm for fused lasso signal approximator with convex loss function
stat.CO
We consider the augmented Lagrangian method (ALM) as a solver for the fused lasso signal approximator (FLSA) problem. The ALM is a dual method in which squares of the constraint functions are added as penalties to the Lagrangian. In order to apply this method to FLSA, two types of auxiliary variables are introduced to ...
statistics
10,859
A note on target distribution ambiguity of likelihood-free samplers
stat.CO
Methods for Bayesian simulation in the presence of computationally intractable likelihood functions are of growing interest. Termed likelihood-free samplers, standard simulation algorithms such as Markov chain Monte Carlo have been adapted for this setting. In this article, by presenting generalisations of existing alg...
statistics
10,860
General Purpose Convolution Algorithm in S4-Classes by means of FFT
stat.CO
Object orientation provides a flexible framework for the implementation of the convolution of arbitrary distributions of real-valued random variables. We discuss an algorithm which is based on the discrete Fourier transformation (DFT) and its fast computability via the fast Fourier transformation (FFT). It directly a...
statistics
10,861
Free energy Sequential Monte Carlo, application to mixture modelling
stat.CO
We introduce a new class of Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods, which we call free energy SMC. This class is inspired by free energy methods, which originate from Physics, and where one samples from a biased distribution such that a given function $\xi(\theta)$ of the state $\theta$ is forced to be uniformly distribu...
statistics
10,862
Approximating quantiles in very large datasets
stat.CO
Very large datasets are often encountered in climatology, either from a multiplicity of observations over time and space or outputs from deterministic models (sometimes in petabytes= 1 million gigabytes). Loading a large data vector and sorting it, is impossible sometimes due to memory limitations or computing power. W...
statistics
10,863
Cases for the nugget in modeling computer experiments
stat.CO
Most surrogate models for computer experiments are interpolators, and the most common interpolator is a Gaussian process (GP) that deliberately omits a small-scale (measurement) error term called the nugget. The explanation is that computer experiments are, by definition, "deterministic", and so there is no measurement...
statistics
10,864
Multiplicative random walk Metropolis-Hastings on the real line
stat.CO
In this article we propose multiplication based random walk Metropolis Hastings (MH) algorithm on the real line. We call it the random dive MH (RDMH) algorithm. This algorithm, even if simple to apply, was not studied earlier in Markov chain Monte Carlo literature. The associated kernel is shown to have standard proper...
statistics
10,865
Rate estimation in partially observed Markov jump processes with measurement errors
stat.CO
We present a simulation methodology for Bayesian estimation of rate parameters in Markov jump processes arising for example in stochastic kinetic models. To handle the problem of missing components and measurement errors in observed data, we embed the Markov jump process into the framework of a general state space mode...
statistics
10,866
Bayesian Tracking of Emerging Epidemics Using Ensemble Optimal Statistical Interpolation (EnOSI)
stat.CO
We explore the use of the optimal statistical interpolation (OSI) data assimilation method for the statistical tracking of emerging epidemics and to study the spatial dynamics of a disease. The epidemic models that we used for this study are spatial variants of the common susceptible-infectious-removed (S-I-R) compartm...
statistics
10,867
The Time Machine: A Simulation Approach for Stochastic Trees
stat.CO
In the following paper we consider a simulation technique for stochastic trees. One of the most important areas in computational genetics is the calculation and subsequent maximization of the likelihood function associated to such models. This typically consists of using importance sampling (IS) and sequential Monte Ca...
statistics
10,868
Tuning Tempered Transitions
stat.CO
The method of tempered transitions was proposed by Neal (1996) for tackling the difficulties arising when using Markov chain Monte Carlo to sample from multimodal distributions. In common with methods such as simulated tempering and Metropolis-coupled MCMC, the key idea is to utilise a series of successively easier to ...
statistics
10,869
A Bregman Extension of quasi-Newton updates II: Convergence and Robustness Properties
stat.CO
We propose an extension of quasi-Newton methods, and investigate the convergence and the robustness properties of the proposed update formulae for the approximate Hessian matrix. Fletcher has studied a variational problem which derives the approximate Hessian update formula of the quasi-Newton methods. We point out tha...
statistics
10,870
A Bregman Extension of quasi-Newton updates I: An Information Geometrical framework
stat.CO
We study quasi-Newton methods from the viewpoint of information geometry induced associated with Bregman divergences. Fletcher has studied a variational problem which derives the approximate Hessian update formula of the quasi-Newton methods. We point out that the variational problem is identical to optimization of the...
statistics
10,871
Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Nonnegative Trigonometric Sum Models Using a Newton-like Algorithm on Manifolds
stat.CO
In Fern\'andez-Dur\'an (2004), a new family of circular distributions based on nonnegative trigonometric sums (NNTS models) is developed. Because the parameter space of this family is the surface of the hypersphere, an efficient Newton-like algorithm on manifolds is generated in order to obtain the maximum likelihood e...
statistics
10,872
A Comparison of Methods for Computing Autocorrelation Time
stat.CO
This paper describes four methods for estimating autocorrelation time and evaluates these methods with a test set of seven series. Fitting an autoregressive process appears to be the most accurate method of the four. An R package is provided for extending the comparison to more methods and test series.
statistics
10,873
Discussions on "Riemann manifold Langevin and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo methods"
stat.CO
This is a collection of discussions of `Riemann manifold Langevin and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo methods" by Girolami and Calderhead, to appear in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B.
statistics
10,874
Interacting Multiple Try Algorithms with Different Proposal Distributions
stat.CO
We propose a new class of interacting Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms designed for increasing the efficiency of a modified multiple-try Metropolis (MTM) algorithm. The extension with respect to the existing MCMC literature is twofold. The sampler proposed extends the basic MTM algorithm by allowing different...
statistics
10,875
Online Expectation-Maximisation
stat.CO
Tutorial chapter on the Online EM algorithm to appear in the volume 'Mixtures' edited by Kerrie Mengersen, Mike Titterington and Christian P. Robert.
statistics
10,876
Metropolising forward particle filtering backward sampling and Rao-Blackwellisation of Metropolised particle smoothers
stat.CO
Smoothing in state-space models amounts to computing the conditional distribution of the latent state trajectory, given observations, or expectations of functionals of the state trajectory with respect to this distributions. For models that are not linear Gaussian or possess finite state space, smoothing distributions ...
statistics
10,877
Efficient Bayesian Inference for Switching State-Space Models using Discrete Particle Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods
stat.CO
Switching state-space models (SSSM) are a very popular class of time series models that have found many applications in statistics, econometrics and advanced signal processing. Bayesian inference for these models typically relies on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques. However, even sophisticated MCMC methods de...
statistics
10,878
Simulation-based Bayesian analysis for multiple changepoints
stat.CO
This paper presents a Markov chain Monte Carlo method to generate approximate posterior samples in retrospective multiple changepoint problems where the number of changes is not known in advance. The method uses conjugate models whereby the marginal likelihood for the data between consecutive changepoints is tractable....
statistics
10,879
Block clustering with collapsed latent block models
stat.CO
We introduce a Bayesian extension of the latent block model for model-based block clustering of data matrices. Our approach considers a block model where block parameters may be integrated out. The result is a posterior defined over the number of clusters in rows and columns and cluster memberships. The number of row a...
statistics
10,880
Robust adaptive Metropolis algorithm with coerced acceptance rate
stat.CO
The adaptive Metropolis (AM) algorithm of Haario, Saksman and Tamminen [Bernoulli 7 (2001) 223-242] uses the estimated covariance of the target distribution in the proposal distribution. This paper introduces a new robust adaptive Metropolis algorithm estimating the shape of the target distribution and simultaneously c...
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10,881
Graphical Comparison of MCMC Performance
stat.CO
This paper presents a graphical method for comparing performance of Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. Most researchers present comparisons of MCMC methods using tables of figures of merit; this paper presents a graphical alternative. It first discusses the computation of autocorrelation time, then uses this to construc...
statistics
10,882
An Alternating Direction Method for Finding Dantzig Selectors
stat.CO
In this paper, we study the alternating direction method for finding the Dantzig selectors, which are first introduced in [8]. In particular, at each iteration we apply the nonmonotone gradient method proposed in [17] to approximately solve one subproblem of this method. We compare our approach with a first-order metho...
statistics
10,883
Slice Sampling with Adaptive Multivariate Steps: The Shrinking-Rank Method
stat.CO
The shrinking rank method is a variation of slice sampling that is efficient at sampling from multivariate distributions with highly correlated parameters. It requires that the gradient of the log-density be computable. At each individual step, it approximates the current slice with a Gaussian occupying a shrinking-dim...
statistics
10,884
Approximate simulation-free Bayesian inference for multiple changepoint models with dependence within segments
stat.CO
This paper proposes approaches for the analysis of multiple changepoint models when dependency in the data is modelled through a hierarchical Gaussian Markov random field. Integrated nested Laplace approximations are used to approximate data quantities, and an approximate filtering recursions approach is proposed for s...
statistics
10,885
A coordinate-wise optimization algorithm for the Fused Lasso
stat.CO
L1 -penalized regression methods such as the Lasso (Tibshirani 1996) that achieve both variable selection and shrinkage have been very popular. An extension of this method is the Fused Lasso (Tibshirani and Wang 2007), which allows for the incorporation of external information into the model. In this article, we develo...
statistics
10,886
Two Proposals for Robust PCA using Semidefinite Programming
stat.CO
The performance of principal component analysis (PCA) suffers badly in the presence of outliers. This paper proposes two novel approaches for robust PCA based on semidefinite programming. The first method, maximum mean absolute deviation rounding (MDR), seeks directions of large spread in the data while damping the eff...
statistics
10,887
Zero Variance Markov Chain Monte Carlo for Bayesian Estimators
stat.CO
Interest is in evaluating, by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation, the expected value of a function with respect to a, possibly unnormalized, probability distribution. A general purpose variance reduction technique for the MCMC estimator, based on the zero-variance principle introduced in the physics literature,...
statistics
10,888
MCMC Using Ensembles of States for Problems with Fast and Slow Variables such as Gaussian Process Regression
stat.CO
I introduce a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) scheme in which sampling from a distribution with density pi(x) is done using updates operating on an "ensemble" of states. The current state x is first stochastically mapped to an ensemble, x^{(1)},...,x^{(K)}. This ensemble is then updated using MCMC updates that leave in...
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10,889
Approximate Bayesian Computational methods
stat.CO
Also known as likelihood-free methods, approximate Bayesian computational (ABC) methods have appeared in the past ten years as the most satisfactory approach to untractable likelihood problems, first in genetics then in a broader spectrum of applications. However, these methods suffer to some degree from calibration di...
statistics
10,890
Marginal Likelihood Computation via Arrogance Sampling
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This paper describes a method for estimating the marginal likelihood or Bayes factors of Bayesian models using non-parametric importance sampling ("arrogance sampling"). This method can also be used to compute the normalizing constant of probability distributions. Because the required inputs are samples from the distri...
statistics
10,891
SMC^2: an efficient algorithm for sequential analysis of state-space models
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We consider the generic problem of performing sequential Bayesian inference in a state-space model with observation process y, state process x and fixed parameter theta. An idealized approach would be to apply the iterated batch importance sampling (IBIS) algorithm of Chopin (2002). This is a sequential Monte Carlo alg...
statistics
10,892
Nonasymptotic bounds on the mean square error for MCMC estimates via renewal techniques
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The Nummellin's split chain construction allows to decompose a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) trajectory into i.i.d. "excursions". RegenerativeMCMC algorithms based on this technique use a random number of samples. They have been proposed as a promising alternative to usual fixed length simulation [25, 33, 14]. In thi...
statistics
10,893
Perfect Simulation for Mixtures with Known and Unknown Number of components
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We propose and develop a novel and effective perfect sampling methodology for simulating from posteriors corresponding to mixtures with either known (fixed) or unknown number of components. For the latter we consider the Dirichlet process-based mixture model developed by these authors, and show that our ideas are appli...
statistics
10,894
Approximating Probability Densities by Iterated Laplace Approximations
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The Laplace approximation is an old, but frequently used method to approximate integrals for Bayesian calculations. In this paper we develop an extension of the Laplace approximation, by applying it iteratively to the residual, i.e., the difference between the current approximation and the true function. The final appr...
statistics
10,895
A Path Algorithm for Constrained Estimation
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Many least squares problems involve affine equality and inequality constraints. Although there are variety of methods for solving such problems, most statisticians find constrained estimation challenging. The current paper proposes a new path following algorithm for quadratic programming based on exact penalization. Si...
statistics
10,896
On the Stability of Sequential Monte Carlo Methods in High Dimensions
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We investigate the stability of a Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) method applied to the problem of sampling from a target distribution on $\mathbb{R}^d$ for large $d$. It is well known that using a single importance sampling step one produces an approximation for the target that deteriorates as the dimension $d$ increases...
statistics
10,897
Automatic Step Size Selection in Random Walk Metropolis Algorithms
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Practitioners of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) may hesitate to use random walk Metropolis-Hastings algorithms, especially variable-at-a-time algorithms with many parameters, because these algorithms require users to select values of tuning parameters (step sizes). These algorithms perform poorly if the step sizes are...
statistics
10,898
Sampling decomposable graphs using a Markov chain on junction trees
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Full Bayesian computational inference for model determination in undirected graphical models is currently restricted to decomposable graphs, except for problems of very small scale. In this paper we develop new, more efficient methodology for such inference, by making two contributions to the computational geometry of ...
statistics
10,899
Bounding rare event probabilities in computer experiments
stat.CO
We are interested in bounding probabilities of rare events in the context of computer experiments. These rare events depend on the output of a physical model with random input variables. Since the model is only known through an expensive black box function, standard efficient Monte Carlo methods designed for rare event...
statistics