Stratified distance space improves the efficiency of sequential samplers for approximate Bayesian computation

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Pesonen, Henri, Corander, Jukka
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2023
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author Pesonen, Henri
Corander, Jukka
author_facet Pesonen, Henri
Corander, Jukka
contents Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) methods are standard tools for inferring parameters of complex models when the likelihood function is analytically intractable. A popular approach to improving the poor acceptance rate of the basic rejection sampling ABC algorithm is to use sequential Monte Carlo (ABC SMC) to produce a sequence of proposal distributions adapting towards the posterior, instead of generating values from the prior distribution of the model parameters. Proposal distribution for the subsequent iteration is typically obtained from a weighted set of samples, often called particles, of the current iteration of this sequence. Current methods for constructing these proposal distributions treat all the particles equivalently, regardless of the corresponding value generated by the sampler, which may lead to inefficiency when propagating the information across iterations of the algorithm. To improve sampler efficiency, we introduce a modified approach called stratified distance ABC SMC. Our algorithm stratifies particles based on their distance between the corresponding synthetic and observed data, and then constructs distinct proposal distributions for all the strata. Taking into account the distribution of distances across the particle space leads to substantially improved acceptance rate of the rejection sampling. We further show that efficiency can be gained by introducing a novel stopping rule for the sequential process based on the stratified posterior samples and demonstrate these advances by several examples.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_00324
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Stratified distance space improves the efficiency of sequential samplers for approximate Bayesian computation
Pesonen, Henri
Corander, Jukka
Methodology
Computation
Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) methods are standard tools for inferring parameters of complex models when the likelihood function is analytically intractable. A popular approach to improving the poor acceptance rate of the basic rejection sampling ABC algorithm is to use sequential Monte Carlo (ABC SMC) to produce a sequence of proposal distributions adapting towards the posterior, instead of generating values from the prior distribution of the model parameters. Proposal distribution for the subsequent iteration is typically obtained from a weighted set of samples, often called particles, of the current iteration of this sequence. Current methods for constructing these proposal distributions treat all the particles equivalently, regardless of the corresponding value generated by the sampler, which may lead to inefficiency when propagating the information across iterations of the algorithm. To improve sampler efficiency, we introduce a modified approach called stratified distance ABC SMC. Our algorithm stratifies particles based on their distance between the corresponding synthetic and observed data, and then constructs distinct proposal distributions for all the strata. Taking into account the distribution of distances across the particle space leads to substantially improved acceptance rate of the rejection sampling. We further show that efficiency can be gained by introducing a novel stopping rule for the sequential process based on the stratified posterior samples and demonstrate these advances by several examples.
title Stratified distance space improves the efficiency of sequential samplers for approximate Bayesian computation
topic Methodology
Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.00324