## invertible flow non equilibrium sampling (InFiNE)

Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 21, 2021 by xi'an

With Achille Thin and a few other coauthors [and friends], we just arXived a paper on a new form of importance sampling, motivated by a recent paper of Rotskoff and Vanden-Eijnden (2019) on non-equilibrium importance sampling. The central ideas of this earlier paper are the introduction of conformal Hamiltonian dynamics, where a dissipative term is added to the ODE found in HMC, namely

$\dfrac{\text d p_t}{\text dt}=-\dfrac{\partial}{\partial q}H(q_t,p_t)-\gamma p_t=-\nabla U(q_t)-\gamma p_t$

which means that all orbits converge to fixed points that satisfy ∇U(q) = 0 as the energy eventually vanishes. And the property that, were T be a conformal Hamiltonian integrator associated with H, i.e. perserving the invariant measure, averaging over orbits of T would improve the precision of Monte Carlo unbiased estimators, while remaining unbiased. The fact that Rotskoff and Vanden-Eijnden (2019) considered only continuous time makes their proposal hard to implement without adding approximation error, while our approach is directly set in discrete-time and preserves unbiasedness. And since measure preserving transforms are too difficult to come by, a change of variable correction, as in normalising flows, allows for an arbitrary choice of T, while keeping the estimator unbiased. The use of conformal maps makes for a natural choice of T in this context.

The resulting InFiNE algorithm is an MCMC particular algorithm which can be represented as a  partially collapsed Gibbs sampler when using the right auxiliary variables. As in Andrieu, Doucet and Hollenstein (2010) and their ISIR algorithm. The algorithm can be used for estimating normalising constants, comparing favourably with AIS, sampling from complex targets, and optimising variational autoencoders and their ELBO.

I really appreciated working on this project, with links to earlier notions like multiple importance sampling à la Owen and Zhou (2000), nested sampling, non-homogeneous normalising flows, measure estimation à la Kong et al. (2002), on which I worked in a more or less distant past.

## general perspective on the Metropolis–Hastings kernel

Posted in Books, Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2021 by xi'an

[My Bristol friends and co-authors] Christophe Andrieu, and Anthony Lee, along with Sam Livingstone arXived a massive paper on 01 January on the Metropolis-Hastings kernel.

“Our aim is to develop a framework making establishing correctness of complex Markov chain Monte Carlo kernels a purely mechanical or algebraic exercise, while making communication of ideas simpler and unambiguous by allowing a stronger focus on essential features (…) This framework can also be used to validate kernels that do not satisfy detailed balance, i.e. which are not reversible, but a modified version thereof.”

A central notion in this highly general framework is, extending Tierney (1998), to see an MCMC kernel as a triplet involving a probability measure μ (on an extended space), an involution transform φ generalising the proposal step (i.e. þ²=id), and an associated acceptance probability ð. Then μ-reversibility occurs for

$\eth(\xi)\mu(\text{d}\xi)= \eth(\phi(\xi))\mu^{\phi}(\text{d}\xi)$

with the rhs involving the push-forward measure induced by μ and φ. And furthermore there is always a choice of an acceptance probability ð ensuring for this equality to happen. Interestingly, the new framework allows for mostly seamless handling of more complex versions of MCMC such as reversible jump and parallel tempering. But also non-reversible kernels, incl. for instance delayed rejection. And HMC, incl. NUTS. And pseudo-marginal, multiple-try, PDMPs, &c., &c. it is remarkable to see such a general theory emerging a this (late?) stage of the evolution of the field (and I will need more time and attention to understand its consequences).

## the surprisingly overlooked efficiency of SMC

Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on December 15, 2020 by xi'an

At the Laplace demon’s seminar today (whose cool name I cannot tire of!), Nicolas Chopin gave a webinar with the above equally cool title. And the first slide debunking myths about SMC’s:

The second part of the talk is about a recent arXival Nicolas wrote with his student Hai-Dang DauI missed, about increasing the number of MCMC steps when moving the particles. Called waste-free SMC. Where only one fraction of the particles is updated, but this is enough to create a sort of independence from previous iterations of the SMC. (Hai-Dang Dau and Nicolas Chopin had to taylor their own convergence proof for this modification of the usual SMC. Producing a single-run assessment of the asymptotic variance.)

On the side, I heard about a very neat (if possibly toyish) example on estimating the number of Latin squares:

And the other item of information is that Nicolas’ and Omiros’ book, An Introduction to Sequential Monte Carlo, has now appeared! (Looking forward reading the parts I had not yet read.)

## MCMC, variational inference, invertible flows… bridging the gap?

Posted in Books, Mountains, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 2, 2020 by xi'an

Two weeks ago, my friend [see here when climbing Pic du Midi d’Ossau in 2005!] and coauthor Éric Moulines gave a very interesting on-line talk entitled MCMC, Variational Inference, Invertible Flows… Bridging the gap?, which was merging MCMC, variational autoencoders, and variational inference. I paid close attention as I plan to teach an advanced course on acronyms next semester in Warwick. (By acronyms, I mean ABC+GAN+VAE!)

The notion in this work is that variational autoencoders are based on over-simple mean-field variational distributions, that usually produce a poor approximation of the target distribution. Éric and his coauthors propose to introduce a Metropolis step in the VAE. This leads to a more general notion of Markov transitions and a global balance condition. Hamiltonian Monte Carlo can be used as well and it improves the latent distribution approximation, namely the encoder, which is surprising to me. The steps of the Markov kernel produce a manageable transform of the initial mean field approximation, a random version of the original VAE. Manageable provided not too many MCMC steps are implemented. (Now, the flow of slides was much too fast for me to get a proper understanding of the implementation of the method, of the degree of its calibration, and of the computing cost. I need to read the associated papers.)

Once the talk was over, I went back to changing tires and tubes, as two bikes of mine had flat tires, the latest being a spectacular explosion (!) that seemingly went through the tire (although I believe the opposite happened, namely the tire got slashed and induced the tube to blow out very quickly). Blame the numerous bits of broken glass over bike paths.

## state of the art in sampling & clustering [workshop]

Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , on September 17, 2020 by xi'an

Next month, I am taking part in a workshop on sampling & clustering at the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik in Garching, Germany (near München). By giving a three hour introduction to ABC, as I did three years ago in Autrans. Being there and talking with local researchers if the sanitary conditions allow. From my office otherwise. Other speakers include Michael Betancourt on HMC and Johannes Buchner on nested sampling. The remote participation to this MPI workshop is both open and free, but participants must register before 18 September, namely tomorrow.