Scalable couplings for the random walk Metropolis algorithm

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Papp, Tamás P., Sherlock, Chris
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
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author Papp, Tamás P.
Sherlock, Chris
author_facet Papp, Tamás P.
Sherlock, Chris
contents There has been a recent surge of interest in coupling methods for Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms: they facilitate convergence quantification and unbiased estimation, while exploiting embarrassingly parallel computing capabilities. Motivated by these, we consider the design and analysis of couplings of the random walk Metropolis algorithm which scale well with the dimension of the target measure. Methodologically, we introduce a low-rank modification of the synchronous coupling that is provably optimally contractive in standard high-dimensional asymptotic regimes. We expose a shortcoming of the reflection coupling, the state of the art at the time of writing, and we propose a modification which mitigates the issue. Our analysis bridges the gap to the optimal scaling literature and builds a framework of asymptotic optimality which may be of independent interest. We illustrate the applicability of our proposed couplings, and the potential for extending our ideas, with various numerical experiments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2211_12585
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Scalable couplings for the random walk Metropolis algorithm
Papp, Tamás P.
Sherlock, Chris
Computation
Probability
Methodology
There has been a recent surge of interest in coupling methods for Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms: they facilitate convergence quantification and unbiased estimation, while exploiting embarrassingly parallel computing capabilities. Motivated by these, we consider the design and analysis of couplings of the random walk Metropolis algorithm which scale well with the dimension of the target measure. Methodologically, we introduce a low-rank modification of the synchronous coupling that is provably optimally contractive in standard high-dimensional asymptotic regimes. We expose a shortcoming of the reflection coupling, the state of the art at the time of writing, and we propose a modification which mitigates the issue. Our analysis bridges the gap to the optimal scaling literature and builds a framework of asymptotic optimality which may be of independent interest. We illustrate the applicability of our proposed couplings, and the potential for extending our ideas, with various numerical experiments.
title Scalable couplings for the random walk Metropolis algorithm
topic Computation
Probability
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.12585