11,372 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
Predictive maintenance for the heated hold-up tank
We present a numerical method to compute an optimal maintenance date for the
test case of the heated hold-up tank. The system consists of a tank containing
a fluid whose level is controlled by three components: two inlet pumps and one
outlet valve. A thermal power source heats up the fluid. The failure rates of
the components depends on the temperature, the position of the three components
monitors the liquid level in the tank and the liquid level determines the
temperature. Therefore, this system can be modeled by a hybrid process where
the discrete (components) and continuous (level, temperature) parts interact in
a closed loop. We model the system by a piecewise deterministic Markov process,
propose and implement a numerical method to compute the optimal maintenance
date to repair the components before the total failure of the system.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1101.174
A Partially Reflecting Random Walk on Spheres Algorithm for Electrical Impedance Tomography
In this work, we develop a probabilistic estimator for the voltage-to-current
map arising in electrical impedance tomography. This novel so-called partially
reflecting random walk on spheres estimator enables Monte Carlo methods to
compute the voltage-to-current map in an embarrassingly parallel manner, which
is an important issue with regard to the corresponding inverse problem. Our
method uses the well-known random walk on spheres algorithm inside subdomains
where the diffusion coefficient is constant and employs replacement techniques
motivated by finite difference discretization to deal with both mixed boundary
conditions and interface transmission conditions. We analyze the global bias
and the variance of the new estimator both theoretically and experimentally. In
a second step, the variance is considerably reduced via a novel control variate
conditional sampling technique
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo Acceleration Using Surrogate Functions with Random Bases
For big data analysis, high computational cost for Bayesian methods often
limits their applications in practice. In recent years, there have been many
attempts to improve computational efficiency of Bayesian inference. Here we
propose an efficient and scalable computational technique for a
state-of-the-art Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, namely, Hamiltonian
Monte Carlo (HMC). The key idea is to explore and exploit the structure and
regularity in parameter space for the underlying probabilistic model to
construct an effective approximation of its geometric properties. To this end,
we build a surrogate function to approximate the target distribution using
properly chosen random bases and an efficient optimization process. The
resulting method provides a flexible, scalable, and efficient sampling
algorithm, which converges to the correct target distribution. We show that by
choosing the basis functions and optimization process differently, our method
can be related to other approaches for the construction of surrogate functions
such as generalized additive models or Gaussian process models. Experiments
based on simulated and real data show that our approach leads to substantially
more efficient sampling algorithms compared to existing state-of-the art
methods
Inverse Modeling for MEG/EEG data
We provide an overview of the state-of-the-art for mathematical methods that
are used to reconstruct brain activity from neurophysiological data. After a
brief introduction on the mathematics of the forward problem, we discuss
standard and recently proposed regularization methods, as well as Monte Carlo
techniques for Bayesian inference. We classify the inverse methods based on the
underlying source model, and discuss advantages and disadvantages. Finally we
describe an application to the pre-surgical evaluation of epileptic patients.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figur
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