Adaptive multi-stage integration schemes for Hamiltonian Monte Carlo

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Nagar, Lorenzo, Fernández-Pendás, Mario, Sanz-Serna, Jesús María, Akhmatskaya, Elena
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Nagar, Lorenzo
Fernández-Pendás, Mario
Sanz-Serna, Jesús María
Akhmatskaya, Elena
author_facet Nagar, Lorenzo
Fernández-Pendás, Mario
Sanz-Serna, Jesús María
Akhmatskaya, Elena
contents Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a powerful tool for Bayesian statistical inference due to its potential to rapidly explore high dimensional state space, avoiding the random walk behavior typical of many Markov Chain Monte Carlo samplers. The proper choice of the integrator of the Hamiltonian dynamics is key to the efficiency of HMC. It is becoming increasingly clear that multi-stage splitting integrators are a good alternative to the Verlet method, traditionally used in HMC. Here we propose a principled way of finding optimal, problem-specific integration schemes (in terms of the best conservation of energy for harmonic forces/Gaussian targets) within the families of 2- and 3-stage splitting integrators. The method, which we call Adaptive Integration Approach for statistics, or s-AIA, uses a multivariate Gaussian model and simulation data obtained at the HMC burn-in stage to identify a system-specific dimensional stability interval and assigns the most appropriate 2-/3-stage integrator for any user-chosen simulation step size within that interval. s-AIA has been implemented in the in-house software package HaiCS without introducing computational overheads in the simulations. The efficiency of the s-AIA integrators and their impact on the HMC accuracy, sampling performance and convergence are discussed in comparison with known fixed-parameter multi-stage splitting integrators (including Verlet). Numerical experiments on well-known statistical models show that the adaptive schemes reach the best possible performance within the family of 2-, 3-stage splitting schemes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2307_02096
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Adaptive multi-stage integration schemes for Hamiltonian Monte Carlo
Nagar, Lorenzo
Fernández-Pendás, Mario
Sanz-Serna, Jesús María
Akhmatskaya, Elena
Computation
Numerical Analysis
Methodology
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a powerful tool for Bayesian statistical inference due to its potential to rapidly explore high dimensional state space, avoiding the random walk behavior typical of many Markov Chain Monte Carlo samplers. The proper choice of the integrator of the Hamiltonian dynamics is key to the efficiency of HMC. It is becoming increasingly clear that multi-stage splitting integrators are a good alternative to the Verlet method, traditionally used in HMC. Here we propose a principled way of finding optimal, problem-specific integration schemes (in terms of the best conservation of energy for harmonic forces/Gaussian targets) within the families of 2- and 3-stage splitting integrators. The method, which we call Adaptive Integration Approach for statistics, or s-AIA, uses a multivariate Gaussian model and simulation data obtained at the HMC burn-in stage to identify a system-specific dimensional stability interval and assigns the most appropriate 2-/3-stage integrator for any user-chosen simulation step size within that interval. s-AIA has been implemented in the in-house software package HaiCS without introducing computational overheads in the simulations. The efficiency of the s-AIA integrators and their impact on the HMC accuracy, sampling performance and convergence are discussed in comparison with known fixed-parameter multi-stage splitting integrators (including Verlet). Numerical experiments on well-known statistical models show that the adaptive schemes reach the best possible performance within the family of 2-, 3-stage splitting schemes.
title Adaptive multi-stage integration schemes for Hamiltonian Monte Carlo
topic Computation
Numerical Analysis
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.02096