Beyond Self-Repellent Kernels: History-Driven Target Towards Efficient Nonlinear MCMC on General Graphs

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hu, Jie, Ma, Yi-Ting, Eun, Do Young
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915412472496128
author Hu, Jie
Ma, Yi-Ting
Eun, Do Young
author_facet Hu, Jie
Ma, Yi-Ting
Eun, Do Young
contents We propose a history-driven target (HDT) framework in Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to improve any random walk algorithm on discrete state spaces, such as general undirected graphs, for efficient sampling from target distribution $\boldsymbolμ$. With broad applications in network science and distributed optimization, recent innovations like the self-repellent random walk (SRRW) achieve near-zero variance by prioritizing under-sampled states through transition kernel modifications based on past visit frequencies. However, SRRW's reliance on explicit computation of transition probabilities for all neighbors at each step introduces substantial computational overhead, while its strict dependence on time-reversible Markov chains excludes advanced non-reversible MCMC methods. To overcome these limitations, instead of direct modification of transition kernel, HDT introduces a history-dependent target distribution $\boldsymbolπ[\mathbf{x}]$ to replace the original target $\boldsymbolμ$ in any graph sampler, where $\mathbf{x}$ represents the empirical measure of past visits. This design preserves lightweight implementation by requiring only local information between the current and proposed states and achieves compatibility with both reversible and non-reversible MCMC samplers, while retaining unbiased samples with target distribution $\boldsymbolμ$ and near-zero variance performance. Extensive experiments in graph sampling demonstrate consistent performance gains, and a memory-efficient Least Recently Used (LRU) cache ensures scalability to large general graphs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_18300
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond Self-Repellent Kernels: History-Driven Target Towards Efficient Nonlinear MCMC on General Graphs
Hu, Jie
Ma, Yi-Ting
Eun, Do Young
Machine Learning
We propose a history-driven target (HDT) framework in Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to improve any random walk algorithm on discrete state spaces, such as general undirected graphs, for efficient sampling from target distribution $\boldsymbolμ$. With broad applications in network science and distributed optimization, recent innovations like the self-repellent random walk (SRRW) achieve near-zero variance by prioritizing under-sampled states through transition kernel modifications based on past visit frequencies. However, SRRW's reliance on explicit computation of transition probabilities for all neighbors at each step introduces substantial computational overhead, while its strict dependence on time-reversible Markov chains excludes advanced non-reversible MCMC methods. To overcome these limitations, instead of direct modification of transition kernel, HDT introduces a history-dependent target distribution $\boldsymbolπ[\mathbf{x}]$ to replace the original target $\boldsymbolμ$ in any graph sampler, where $\mathbf{x}$ represents the empirical measure of past visits. This design preserves lightweight implementation by requiring only local information between the current and proposed states and achieves compatibility with both reversible and non-reversible MCMC samplers, while retaining unbiased samples with target distribution $\boldsymbolμ$ and near-zero variance performance. Extensive experiments in graph sampling demonstrate consistent performance gains, and a memory-efficient Least Recently Used (LRU) cache ensures scalability to large general graphs.
title Beyond Self-Repellent Kernels: History-Driven Target Towards Efficient Nonlinear MCMC on General Graphs
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.18300