On Integration Methods Based on Scrambled Nets of Arbitrary Size

We consider the problem of evaluating $I(\varphi):=\int_{[0,1)^s}\varphi(x) dx$ for a function $\varphi \in L^2[0,1)^{s}$. In situations where $I(\varphi)$ can be approximated by an estimate of the form $N^{-1}\sum_{n=0}^{N-1}\varphi(x^n)$, with $\{x^n\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$ a point set in $[0,1)^s$, it is now well known that the $O_P(N^{-1/2})$ Monte Carlo convergence rate can be improved by taking for $\{x^n\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$ the first $N=\lambda b^m$ points, $\lambda\in\{1,\dots,b-1\}$, of a scrambled $(t,s)$-sequence in base $b\geq 2$. In this paper we derive a bound for the variance of scrambled net quadrature rules which is of order $o(N^{-1})$ without any restriction on $N$. As a corollary, this bound allows us to provide simple conditions to get, for any pattern of $N$, an integration error of size $o_P(N^{-1/2})$ for functions that depend on the quadrature size $N$. Notably, we establish that sequential quasi-Monte Carlo (M. Gerber and N. Chopin, 2015, \emph{J. R. Statist. Soc. B, to appear.}) reaches the $o_P(N^{-1/2})$ convergence rate for any values of $N$. In a numerical study, we show that for scrambled net quadrature rules we can relax the constraint on $N$ without any loss of efficiency when the integrand $\varphi$ is a discontinuous function while, for sequential quasi-Monte Carlo, taking $N=\lambda b^m$ may only provide moderate gains.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figures (final version, to appear in The Journal of Complexity

Remarks on numerical integration, discrepancy, and diaphony

The goal of this paper is twofold. First, we present a unified way of formulating numerical integration problems from both approximation theory and discrepancy theory. Second, we show how techniques, developed in approximation theory, work in proving lower bounds for recently developed new type of discrepancy -- the smooth discrepancy

Quadrature rules and distribution of points on manifolds

We study the error in quadrature rules on a compact manifold. As in the Koksma-Hlawka inequality, we consider a discrepancy of the sampling points and a generalized variation of the function. In particular, we give sharp quantitative estimates for quadrature rules of functions in Sobolev classes

Construction of interlaced scrambled polynomial lattice rules of arbitrary high order

Higher order scrambled digital nets are randomized quasi-Monte Carlo rules which have recently been introduced in [J. Dick, Ann. Statist., 39 (2011), 1372--1398] and shown to achieve the optimal rate of convergence of the root mean square error for numerical integration of smooth functions defined on the $s$-dimensional unit cube. The key ingredient there is a digit interlacing function applied to the components of a randomly scrambled digital net whose number of components is $ds$, where the integer $d$ is the so-called interlacing factor. In this paper, we replace the randomly scrambled digital nets by randomly scrambled polynomial lattice point sets, which allows us to obtain a better dependence on the dimension while still achieving the optimal rate of convergence. Our results apply to Owen's full scrambling scheme as well as the simplifications studied by Hickernell, Matou\v{s}ek and Owen. We consider weighted function spaces with general weights, whose elements have square integrable partial mixed derivatives of order up to $\alpha\ge 1$, and derive an upper bound on the variance of the estimator for higher order scrambled polynomial lattice rules. Employing our obtained bound as a quality criterion, we prove that the component-by-component construction can be used to obtain explicit constructions of good polynomial lattice point sets. By first constructing classical polynomial lattice point sets in base $b$ and dimension $ds$, to which we then apply the interlacing scheme of order $d$, we obtain a construction cost of the algorithm of order $\mathcal{O}(dsmb^m)$ operations using $\mathcal{O}(b^m)$ memory in case of product weights, where $b^m$ is the number of points in the polynomial lattice point set

A Discrepancy Bound for Deterministic Acceptance-Rejection Samplers Beyond N−1/2N^{-1/2} in Dimension 1

In this paper we consider an acceptance-rejection (AR) sampler based on deterministic driver sequences. We prove that the discrepancy of an $N$ element sample set generated in this way is bounded by $\mathcal{O} (N^{-2/3}\log N)$, provided that the target density is twice continuously differentiable with non-vanishing curvature and the AR sampler uses the driver sequence $$\mathcal{K}_M= \{( j \alpha, j \beta ) ~~ mod~~1 \mid j = 1,\ldots,M\},$$ where $\alpha,\beta$ are real algebraic numbers such that $1,\alpha,\beta$ is a basis of a number field over $\mathbb{Q}$ of degree $3$. For the driver sequence $$\mathcal{F}_k= \{ ({j}/{F_k}, \{{jF_{k-1}}/{F_k}\} ) \mid j=1,\ldots, F_k\},$$ where $F_k$ is the $k$-th Fibonacci number and $\{x\}=x-\lfloor x \rfloor$ is the fractional part of a non-negative real number $x$, we can remove the $\log$ factor to improve the convergence rate to $\mathcal{O}(N^{-2/3})$, where again $N$ is the number of samples we accepted. We also introduce a criterion for measuring the goodness of driver sequences. The proposed approach is numerically tested by calculating the star-discrepancy of samples generated for some target densities using $\mathcal{K}_M$ and $\mathcal{F}_k$ as driver sequences. These results confirm that achieving a convergence rate beyond $N^{-1/2}$ is possible in practice using $\mathcal{K}_M$ and $\mathcal{F}_k$ as driver sequences in the acceptance-rejection sampler

Smoothing the payoff for efficient computation of Basket option prices

We consider the problem of pricing basket options in a multivariate Black Scholes or Variance Gamma model. From a numerical point of view, pricing such options corresponds to moderate and high dimensional numerical integration problems with non-smooth integrands. Due to this lack of regularity, higher order numerical integration techniques may not be directly available, requiring the use of methods like Monte Carlo specifically designed to work for non-regular problems. We propose to use the inherent smoothing property of the density of the underlying in the above models to mollify the payoff function by means of an exact conditional expectation. The resulting conditional expectation is unbiased and yields a smooth integrand, which is amenable to the efficient use of adaptive sparse grid cubature. Numerical examples indicate that the high-order method may perform orders of magnitude faster compared to Monte Carlo or Quasi Monte Carlo in dimensions up to 35

Quasi-Monte Carlo numerical integration on Rs\mathbb{R}^s: digital nets and worst-case error

Quasi-Monte Carlo rules are equal weight quadrature rules defined over the domain $[0,1]^s$. Here we introduce quasi-Monte Carlo type rules for numerical integration of functions defined on $\mathbb{R}^s$. These rules are obtained by way of some transformation of digital nets such that locally one obtains qMC rules, but at the same time, globally one also has the required distribution. We prove that these rules are optimal for numerical integration in fractional Besov type spaces. The analysis is based on certain tilings of the Walsh phase plane

Numerical Integration on Graphs: where to sample and how to weigh

Let $G=(V,E,w)$ be a finite, connected graph with weighted edges. We are interested in the problem of finding a subset $W \subset V$ of vertices and weights $a_w$ such that $$\frac{1}{|V|}\sum_{v \in V}^{}{f(v)} \sim \sum_{w \in W}{a_w f(w)}$$ for functions $f:V \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ that are `smooth' with respect to the geometry of the graph. The main application are problems where $f$ is known to somehow depend on the underlying graph but is expensive to evaluate on even a single vertex. We prove an inequality showing that the integration problem can be rewritten as a geometric problem (`the optimal packing of heat balls'). We discuss how one would construct approximate solutions of the heat ball packing problem; numerical examples demonstrate the efficiency of the method

Walsh spaces containing smooth functions and quasi-Monte Carlo rules of arbitrary high order

We define a Walsh space which contains all functions whose partial mixed derivatives up to order $\delta \ge 1$ exist and have finite variation. In particular, for a suitable choice of parameters, this implies that certain Sobolev spaces are contained in these Walsh spaces. For this Walsh space we then show that quasi-Monte Carlo rules based on digital $(t,\alpha,s)$-sequences achieve the optimal rate of convergence of the worst-case error for numerical integration. This rate of convergence is also optimal for the subspace of smooth functions. Explicit constructions of digital $(t,\alpha,s)$-sequences are given hence providing explicit quasi-Monte Carlo rules which achieve the optimal rate of convergence of the integration error for arbitrarily smooth functions

Proof Techniques in Quasi-Monte Carlo Theory

In this survey paper we discuss some tools and methods which are of use in quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) theory. We group them in chapters on Numerical Analysis, Harmonic Analysis, Algebra and Number Theory, and Probability Theory. We do not provide a comprehensive survey of all tools, but focus on a few of them, including reproducing and covariance kernels, Littlewood-Paley theory, Riesz products, Minkowski's fundamental theorem, exponential sums, diophantine approximation, Hoeffding's inequality and empirical processes, as well as other tools. We illustrate the use of these methods in QMC using examples.Comment: Revised versio