2,844 research outputs found
Non-Reversible Parallel Tempering: a Scalable Highly Parallel MCMC Scheme
Parallel tempering (PT) methods are a popular class of Markov chain Monte
Carlo schemes used to sample complex high-dimensional probability
distributions. They rely on a collection of interacting auxiliary chains
targeting tempered versions of the target distribution to improve the
exploration of the state-space. We provide here a new perspective on these
highly parallel algorithms and their tuning by identifying and formalizing a
sharp divide in the behaviour and performance of reversible versus
non-reversible PT schemes. We show theoretically and empirically that a class
of non-reversible PT methods dominates its reversible counterparts and identify
distinct scaling limits for the non-reversible and reversible schemes, the
former being a piecewise-deterministic Markov process and the latter a
diffusion. These results are exploited to identify the optimal annealing
schedule for non-reversible PT and to develop an iterative scheme approximating
this schedule. We provide a wide range of numerical examples supporting our
theoretical and methodological contributions. The proposed methodology is
applicable to sample from a distribution with a density with respect
to a reference distribution and compute the normalizing constant. A
typical use case is when is a prior distribution, a likelihood
function and the corresponding posterior.Comment: 74 pages, 30 figures. The method is implemented in an open source
probabilistic programming available at
https://github.com/UBC-Stat-ML/blangSD
Estimation of Dynamic Latent Variable Models Using Simulated Nonparametric Moments
Abstract. Given a model that can be simulated, conditional moments at a trial parameter value can be calculated with high accuracy by applying kernel smoothing methods to a long simulation. With such conditional moments in hand, standard method of moments techniques can be used to estimate the parameter. Because conditional moments are calculated using kernel smoothing rather than simple averaging, it is not necessary that the model be simulable subject to the conditioning information that is used to define the moment conditions. For this reason, the proposed estimator is applicable to general dynamic latent variable models. It is shown that as the number of simulations diverges, the estimator is consistent and a higher-order expansion reveals the stochastic difference between the infeasible GMM estimator based on the same moment conditions and the simulated version. In particular, we show how to adjust standard errors to account for the simulations. Monte Carlo results show how the estimator may be applied to a range of dynamic latent variable (DLV) models, and that it performs well in comparison to several other estimators that have been proposed for DLV models.dynamic latent variable models; simulation-based estimation; simulated moments; kernel regression; nonparametric estimation
Parallel hierarchical sampling:a general-purpose class of multiple-chains MCMC algorithms
This paper introduces the Parallel Hierarchical Sampler (PHS), a class of Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms using several interacting chains having the same target distribution but different mixing properties. Unlike any single-chain MCMC algorithm, upon reaching stationarity one of the PHS chains, which we call the “mother” chain, attains exact Monte Carlo sampling of the target distribution of interest. We empirically show that this translates in a dramatic improvement in the sampler’s performance with respect to single-chain MCMC algorithms. Convergence of the PHS joint transition kernel is proved and its relationships with single-chain samplers, Parallel Tempering (PT) and variable augmentation algorithms are discussed. We then provide two illustrative examples comparing the accuracy of PHS with
Importance driven environment map sampling
In this paper we present an automatic and efficient method for supporting Image Based Lighting (IBL) for bidirectional methods which improves both the sampling of the environment, and the detection and sampling of important regions of the scene, such as windows and doors. These often have a small area proportional to that of the entire scene, so paths which pass through them are generated with a low probability. The method proposed in this paper improves this by taking into account view importance, and modifies the lighting distribution to use light transport information. This also automatically constructs a sampling distribution in locations which are relevant to the camera position, thereby improving sampling. Results are presented when our method is applied to bidirectional rendering techniques, in particular we show results for Bidirectional Path Tracing, Metropolis Light Transport and Progressive Photon Mapping. Efficiency results demonstrate speed up of orders of magnitude (depending on the rendering method used), when compared to other methods
Bayesian Conditional Density Filtering
We propose a Conditional Density Filtering (C-DF) algorithm for efficient
online Bayesian inference. C-DF adapts MCMC sampling to the online setting,
sampling from approximations to conditional posterior distributions obtained by
propagating surrogate conditional sufficient statistics (a function of data and
parameter estimates) as new data arrive. These quantities eliminate the need to
store or process the entire dataset simultaneously and offer a number of
desirable features. Often, these include a reduction in memory requirements and
runtime and improved mixing, along with state-of-the-art parameter inference
and prediction. These improvements are demonstrated through several
illustrative examples including an application to high dimensional compressed
regression. Finally, we show that C-DF samples converge to the target posterior
distribution asymptotically as sampling proceeds and more data arrives.Comment: 41 pages, 7 figures, 12 table
- …