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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wu, Changye, Pudlo, Pierre, Robert, Christian P., Stoehr, Julien
Format: Preprint
Published: 2018
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04449
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author Wu, Changye
Pudlo, Pierre
Robert, Christian P.
Stoehr, Julien
author_facet Wu, Changye
Pudlo, Pierre
Robert, Christian P.
Stoehr, Julien
contents We introduce a Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) methodology based on a randomized selection of integration times, referred to as eHMC, where "e" stands for empirical. The approach relies on an offline calibration phase that leverages importance sampling to construct an empirical distribution on discretization parameters, thereby eliminating the need for manual burn-in diagnostics and online adaptation. The proposal distribution used in the calibration stage is obtained via a Population Monte Carlo scheme combined with tempering and flexible parametric variational families such as normalizing flows. The resulting algorithm defines a mixture of HMC kernels with a fixed mixing distribution, preserving the target distribution. Numerical experiments on benchmarks demonstrate that eHMC achieves competitive or improved efficiency compared to the No-U-Turn Sampler (NUTS) when accounting for computational cost. These results suggest that offline calibration combined with randomized integration schemes provides a viable alternative to adaptive HMC methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_1810_04449
institution arXiv
publishDate 2018
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Faster Hamiltonian Monte Carlo by Learning Leapfrog Scale: a self-calibrated randomized solution
Wu, Changye
Pudlo, Pierre
Robert, Christian P.
Stoehr, Julien
Computation
Data Structures and Algorithms
We introduce a Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) methodology based on a randomized selection of integration times, referred to as eHMC, where "e" stands for empirical. The approach relies on an offline calibration phase that leverages importance sampling to construct an empirical distribution on discretization parameters, thereby eliminating the need for manual burn-in diagnostics and online adaptation. The proposal distribution used in the calibration stage is obtained via a Population Monte Carlo scheme combined with tempering and flexible parametric variational families such as normalizing flows. The resulting algorithm defines a mixture of HMC kernels with a fixed mixing distribution, preserving the target distribution. Numerical experiments on benchmarks demonstrate that eHMC achieves competitive or improved efficiency compared to the No-U-Turn Sampler (NUTS) when accounting for computational cost. These results suggest that offline calibration combined with randomized integration schemes provides a viable alternative to adaptive HMC methods.
title Faster Hamiltonian Monte Carlo by Learning Leapfrog Scale: a self-calibrated randomized solution
topic Computation
Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04449