_version_ 1866911628388204544
author Bernstein, Gary
Doumerg, William Assignies
Troxel, Michael A.
Alarcon, Alex
Amon, Alexandra
Giannini, Giulia
Yin, Boyan
Allam, Sahar
Andrade-Oliveira, Felipe
Brooks, David
Rosell, Aurelio Carnero
Carretero, Jorge
da Costa, Luiz
Pereira, Maria Elidaiana da Silva
De Vicente, Juan
Everett, Spencer
Frieman, Josh
Garcia-Bellido, Juan
Gruen, Daniel
Hinton, Samuel
Hollowood, Devon L.
Honscheid, Klaus
James, David
Lee, Sujeong
Marshall, Jennifer
Mena-Fernández, Juan
Miquel, Ramon
Malagón, Andrés Plazas
Sanchez, Eusebio
Cid, David Sanchez
Sevilla, Ignacio
Shin, Tae-hyeon
Smith, Mathew
Suchyta, Eric
Swanson, Molly
Weaverdyck, Noah
Weller, Jochen
Wiseman, Philip
author_facet Bernstein, Gary
Doumerg, William Assignies
Troxel, Michael A.
Alarcon, Alex
Amon, Alexandra
Giannini, Giulia
Yin, Boyan
Allam, Sahar
Andrade-Oliveira, Felipe
Brooks, David
Rosell, Aurelio Carnero
Carretero, Jorge
da Costa, Luiz
Pereira, Maria Elidaiana da Silva
De Vicente, Juan
Everett, Spencer
Frieman, Josh
Garcia-Bellido, Juan
Gruen, Daniel
Hinton, Samuel
Hollowood, Devon L.
Honscheid, Klaus
James, David
Lee, Sujeong
Marshall, Jennifer
Mena-Fernández, Juan
Miquel, Ramon
Malagón, Andrés Plazas
Sanchez, Eusebio
Cid, David Sanchez
Sevilla, Ignacio
Shin, Tae-hyeon
Smith, Mathew
Suchyta, Eric
Swanson, Molly
Weaverdyck, Noah
Weller, Jochen
Wiseman, Philip
contents A typical Bayesian inference on the values of some parameters of interest $\bf q$ from some data $D$ involves running a Markov Chain (MC) to sample from the posterior $p({\bf q},{\bf n} | D) \propto \mathcal{L}(D | {\bf q},{\bf n}) p({\bf q}) p({\bf n}),$ where $\bf n$ are some nuisance parameters with separable prior. In some cases, the nuisance parameters are high-dimensional, and their prior $p({\bf n})$ is itself defined only by a set of samples that have been drawn from some other MC. The MC for the posterior will typically require evaluation of $p({\bf n})$ at arbitrary values of ${\bf n},$ i.e.\ one needs to provide a density estimator over the full $\bf n$ space from the provided samples. But the high dimensionality of $\bf n$ hinders both the density estimation and the efficiency of the MC for the posterior. We describe a solution to this problem: a linear compression of the $\bf n$ space into a much lower-dimensional space $\bf u$ which projects away directions in $\bf n$ space that cannot appreciably alter $\mathcal{L}.$ The algorithm for doing so is a slight modification to principal components analysis, and is less restrictive on $p(\bf n)$ than other proposed solutions to this issue. We demonstrate this ``mode projection'' technique using the analysis of 2-point correlation functions of weak lensing fields and galaxy density in the \textit{Dark Energy Survey}, where $\bf n$ is a binned representation of the redshift distribution $n(z)$ of the galaxies.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_00758
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dimensional reduction for sampled priors and application to photometric redshift distributions
Bernstein, Gary
Doumerg, William Assignies
Troxel, Michael A.
Alarcon, Alex
Amon, Alexandra
Giannini, Giulia
Yin, Boyan
Allam, Sahar
Andrade-Oliveira, Felipe
Brooks, David
Rosell, Aurelio Carnero
Carretero, Jorge
da Costa, Luiz
Pereira, Maria Elidaiana da Silva
De Vicente, Juan
Everett, Spencer
Frieman, Josh
Garcia-Bellido, Juan
Gruen, Daniel
Hinton, Samuel
Hollowood, Devon L.
Honscheid, Klaus
James, David
Lee, Sujeong
Marshall, Jennifer
Mena-Fernández, Juan
Miquel, Ramon
Malagón, Andrés Plazas
Sanchez, Eusebio
Cid, David Sanchez
Sevilla, Ignacio
Shin, Tae-hyeon
Smith, Mathew
Suchyta, Eric
Swanson, Molly
Weaverdyck, Noah
Weller, Jochen
Wiseman, Philip
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
A typical Bayesian inference on the values of some parameters of interest $\bf q$ from some data $D$ involves running a Markov Chain (MC) to sample from the posterior $p({\bf q},{\bf n} | D) \propto \mathcal{L}(D | {\bf q},{\bf n}) p({\bf q}) p({\bf n}),$ where $\bf n$ are some nuisance parameters with separable prior. In some cases, the nuisance parameters are high-dimensional, and their prior $p({\bf n})$ is itself defined only by a set of samples that have been drawn from some other MC. The MC for the posterior will typically require evaluation of $p({\bf n})$ at arbitrary values of ${\bf n},$ i.e.\ one needs to provide a density estimator over the full $\bf n$ space from the provided samples. But the high dimensionality of $\bf n$ hinders both the density estimation and the efficiency of the MC for the posterior. We describe a solution to this problem: a linear compression of the $\bf n$ space into a much lower-dimensional space $\bf u$ which projects away directions in $\bf n$ space that cannot appreciably alter $\mathcal{L}.$ The algorithm for doing so is a slight modification to principal components analysis, and is less restrictive on $p(\bf n)$ than other proposed solutions to this issue. We demonstrate this ``mode projection'' technique using the analysis of 2-point correlation functions of weak lensing fields and galaxy density in the \textit{Dark Energy Survey}, where $\bf n$ is a binned representation of the redshift distribution $n(z)$ of the galaxies.
title Dimensional reduction for sampled priors and application to photometric redshift distributions
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00758