## conditioning an algorithm

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on June 25, 2021 by xi'an

A question of interest on X validated: given a (possibly black-box) algorithm simulating from a joint distribution with density [wrt a continuous measure] p(z,y) (how) is it possible to simulate from the conditional p(y|z⁰)? Which reminded me of a recent paper by Lindqvist et al. on conditional Monte Carlo. Which zooms on the simulation of a sample X given the value of a sufficient statistic, T(X)=t, revolving about pivotal quantities and inversions à la fiducial statistics, following an earlier Biometrika paper by Lindqvist & Taraldsen, in 2005. The idea is to write

$X=\chi(U,\theta)\qquad T(X)=\tau(U,\theta)$

where U has a distribution that depends on θ, to solve τ(u,θ)=t in θ for a given pair (u,t) with solution θ(u,t) and to generate u conditional on this solution. But this requires getting “under the hood” of the algorithm to such an extent as not answering the original question, or being open to other solutions using the expression for the joint density p(z,y)… In a purely black box situation, ABC appears as the natural if approximate solution.

## European statistics in Finland [EMS17]

Posted in Books, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 2, 2017 by xi'an

While this European meeting of statisticians had a wide range of talks and topics, I found it to be more low key than the previous one I attended in Budapest, maybe because there was hardly any talk there in applied probability. (But there were some sessions in mathematical statistics and Mark Girolami gave a great entry to differential geometry and MCMC, in the spirit of his 2010 discussion paper. Using our recent trip to Montréal as an example of geodesic!) In the Bayesian software session [organised by Aki Vetahri], Javier Gonzáles gave a very neat introduction to Bayesian optimisation: he showed how optimisation can be turned into Bayesian inference or more specifically as a Bayesian decision problem using a loss function related to the problem of interest. The point in following a Bayesian path [or probabilist numerics] is to reduce uncertainty by the medium of prior measures on functions, although resorting [as usual] to Gaussian processes whose arbitrariness I somehow dislike within the infinity of priors (aka stochastic processes) on functions! One of his strong arguments was that the approach includes the possibility for design in picking the next observation point (as done in some ABC papers of Michael Guttman and co-authors, incl. the following talk at EMS 2017) but again the devil may be in the implementation when looking at minimising an objective function… The notion of the myopia of optimisation techniques was another good point: only looking one step ahead in the future diminishes the returns of the optimisation and an alternative presented at AISTATS 2016 [that I do not remember seeing in Càdiz] goes against this myopia.

Umberto Piccini also gave a talk on exploiting synthetic likelihoods in a Bayesian fashion (in connection with the talk he gave last year at MCqMC 2016). I wondered at the use of INLA for this Gaussian representation, as well as at the impact of the parameterisation of the summary statistics. And the session organised by Jean-Michel involved Jimmy Olson, Murray Pollock (Warwick) and myself, with great talks from both other speakers, on PaRIS and PaRISian algorithms by Jimmy, and on a wide range of exact simulation methods of continuous time processes by Murray, both managing to convey the intuition behind their results and avoiding the massive mathematics at work there. By comparison, I must have been quite unclear during my talk since someone interrupted me about how Owen & Zhou (2000) justified their deterministic mixture importance sampling representation. And then left when I could not make sense of his questions [or because it was lunchtime already].

## MCMskv #5 [future with a view]

Posted in Kids, Mountains, R, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 12, 2016 by xi'an

As I am flying back to Paris (with an afternoon committee meeting in München in-between), I am reminiscing on the superlative scientific quality of this MCMski meeting, on the novel directions in computational Bayesian statistics exhibited therein, and on the potential settings for the next meeting. If any.

First, as hopefully obvious from my previous entries, I found the scientific program very exciting, with almost uniformly terrific talks, and a coverage of the field of computational Bayesian statistics that is perfectly tuned to my own interest. In that sense, MCMski is my “top one” conference! Even without considering the idyllic location. While some of the talks were about papers I had already read (and commented here), others brought new vistas and ideas. If one theme is to emerge from this meeting it has to be the one of approximate and noisy algorithms, with a wide variety of solutions and approaches to overcome complexity issues. If anything, I wish the solutions would also incorporate the Boxian fact that the statistical models themselves are approximate. Overall, a fantastic program (says one member of the scientific committee).

Second, as with previous MCMski meetings, I again enjoyed the unique ambience of the meeting, which always feels more relaxed and friendly than other conferences of a similar size, maybe because of the après-ski atmosphere or of the special coziness provided by luxurious mountain hotels. This year hotel was particularly pleasant, with non-guests like myself able to partake of some of their facilities. A big thank you to Anto for arranging so meticulously all the details of such a large meeting!!! I am even more grateful when realising this is the third time Anto takes over the heavy load of organising MCMski. Grazie mille!

Since this is a [and even the!] BayesComp conference, the current section program chair and board must decide on the  structure and schedule of the next meeting. A few suggestions if I may: I would scrap entirely the name MCMski from the next conference as (a) it may sound like academic tourism for unaware bystanders (who only need to check the program of any of the MCMski conferences to stand reassured!) and (b) its topic go way beyond MCMC. Given the large attendance and equally large proportion of young researchers, I would also advise against hosting the conference in a ski resort for both cost and accessibility reasons [as we had already discussed after MCMskiv], in favour of a large enough town to offer a reasonable range of accommodations and of travel options. Like Chamonix, Innsbruck, Reykjavik, or any place with a major airport about one hour away… If nothing is available with skiing possibilities, so be it! While the outdoor inclinations of the early organisers induced us to pick locations where skiing over lunch break was a perk, any accessible location that allows for a concentration of researchers in a small area and for the ensuing day-long exchange is fine! Among the novelties in the program, the tutorials and the Breaking news! sessions were quite successful (says one member of the scientific committee). And should be continued in one format or another. Maybe a more programming thread could be added as well… And as we had mentioned earlier, to see a stronger involvement of the Young Bayesian section in the program would be great! (Even though the current meeting already had many young researcher  talks.)

## MCMskv #3 [town with a view]

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 8, 2016 by xi'an

Third day at MCMskv, where I took advantage of the gap left by the elimination of the Tweedie Race [second time in a row!] to complete and submit our mixture paper. Despite the nice weather. The rest of the day was quite busy with David Dunson giving a plenary talk on various approaches to approximate MCMC solutions, with a broad overview of the potential methods and of the need for better solutions. (On a personal basis, great line from David: “five minutes or four minutes?”. It almost beat David’s question on the previous day, about the weight of a finch that sounded suspiciously close to the question about the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow. I was quite surprised the speaker did not reply with the Arthurian “An African or an European finch?”) In particular, I appreciated the notion that some problems were calling for a reduction in the number of parameters, rather than the number of observations. At which point I wrote down “multiscale approximations required” in my black pad,  a requirement David made a few minutes later. (The talk conditions were also much better than during Michael’s talk, in that the man standing between the screen and myself was David rather than the cameraman! Joke apart, it did not really prevent me from reading them, except for most of the jokes in small prints!)

The first session of the morning involved a talk by Marc Suchard, who used continued fractions to find a closed form likelihood for the SIR epidemiology model (I love continued fractions!), and a talk by Donatello Telesca who studied non-local priors to build a regression tree. While I am somewhat skeptical about non-local testing priors, I found this approach to the construction of a tree quite interesting! In the afternoon, I obviously went to the intractable likelihood session, with talks by Chris Oates on a control variate method for doubly intractable models, Brenda Vo on mixing sequential ABC with Bayesian bootstrap, and Gael Martin on our consistency paper. I was not aware of the Bayesian bootstrap proposal and need to read through the paper, as I fail to see the appeal of the bootstrap part! I later attended a session on exact Monte Carlo methods that was pleasantly homogeneous. With talks by Paul Jenkins (Warwick) on the exact simulation of the Wright-Fisher diffusion, Anthony Lee (Warwick) on designing perfect samplers for chains with atoms, Chang-han Rhee and Sebastian Vollmer on extensions of the Glynn-Rhee debiasing technique I previously discussed on the blog. (Once again, I regretted having to make a choice between the parallel sessions!)

The poster session (after a quick home-made pasta dish with an exceptional Valpolicella!) was almost universally great and with just the right number of posters to go around all of them in the allotted time. With in particular the Breaking News! posters of Giacomo Zanella (Warwick), Beka Steorts and Alexander Terenin. A high quality session that made me regret not touring the previous one due to my own poster presentation.