Inferring Evidence from Nested Sampling Data via Information Field Theory

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Westerkamp, Margret, Roth, Jakob, Frank, Philipp, Handley, Will, Enßlin, Torsten
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2023
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author Westerkamp, Margret
Roth, Jakob
Frank, Philipp
Handley, Will
Enßlin, Torsten
author_facet Westerkamp, Margret
Roth, Jakob
Frank, Philipp
Handley, Will
Enßlin, Torsten
contents Nested sampling provides an estimate of the evidence of a Bayesian inference problem via probing the likelihood as a function of the enclosed prior volume. However, the lack of precise values of the enclosed prior mass of the samples introduces probing noise, which can hamper high-accuracy determinations of the evidence values as estimated from the likelihood-prior-volume function. We introduce an approach based on information field theory, a framework for non-parametric function reconstruction from data, that infers the likelihood-prior-volume function by exploiting its smoothness and thereby aims to improve the evidence calculation. Our method provides posterior samples of the likelihood-prior-volume function that translate into a quantification of the remaining sampling noise for the evidence estimate, or for any other quantity derived from the likelihood-prior-volume function.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_11907
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Inferring Evidence from Nested Sampling Data via Information Field Theory
Westerkamp, Margret
Roth, Jakob
Frank, Philipp
Handley, Will
Enßlin, Torsten
Computational Physics
Nested sampling provides an estimate of the evidence of a Bayesian inference problem via probing the likelihood as a function of the enclosed prior volume. However, the lack of precise values of the enclosed prior mass of the samples introduces probing noise, which can hamper high-accuracy determinations of the evidence values as estimated from the likelihood-prior-volume function. We introduce an approach based on information field theory, a framework for non-parametric function reconstruction from data, that infers the likelihood-prior-volume function by exploiting its smoothness and thereby aims to improve the evidence calculation. Our method provides posterior samples of the likelihood-prior-volume function that translate into a quantification of the remaining sampling noise for the evidence estimate, or for any other quantity derived from the likelihood-prior-volume function.
title Inferring Evidence from Nested Sampling Data via Information Field Theory
topic Computational Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.11907