## warp-U bridge sampling

Posted in Books, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , on October 12, 2016 by xi'an

[I wrote this set of comments right after MCqMC 2016 on a preliminary version of the paper so mileage may vary in terms of the adequation to the current version!]

In warp-U bridge sampling, newly arXived and first presented at MCqMC 16, Xiao-Li Meng continues (in collaboration with Lahzi Wang) his exploration of bridge sampling techniques towards improving the estimation of normalising constants and ratios thereof. The bridge sampling estimator of Meng and Wong (1996) is an harmonic mean importance sampler that requires iterations as it depends on the ratio of interest. Given that the normalising constant of a density does not depend on the chosen parameterisation in the sense that the Jacobian transform preserves this constant, a degree of freedom is in the choice of the parameterisation. This is the idea behind warp transformations. The initial version of Meng and Schilling (2002) used location-scale transforms, while the warp-U solution goes for a multiple location-scale transform that can be seen as based on a location-scale mixture representation of the target. With K components. This approach can also be seen as a sort of artificial reversible jump algorithm when one model is fully known. A strategy Nicolas and I also proposed in our nested sampling Biometrika paper.

Once such a mixture approximation is obtained. each and every component of the mixture can be turned into the standard version of the location-scale family by the appropriate location-scale transform. Since the component index k is unknown for a given X, they call this transform a random transform, which I find somewhat more confusing that helpful. The conditional distribution of the index given the observable x is well-known for mixtures and it is used here to weight the component-wise location-scale transforms of the original distribution p into something that looks rather similar to the standard version of the location-scale family. If no mode has been forgotten by the mixture. The simulations from the original p are then rescaled by one of those transforms, which index k is picked according to the conditional distribution. As explained later to me by XL, the random[ness] in the picture is due to the inclusion of a random ± sign. Still, in the notation introduced in (13), I do not get how the distribution Þ [sorry for using different symbols, I cannot render a tilde on a p] is defined since both ψ and W are random. Is it the marginal? In which case it would read as a weighted average of rescaled versions of p. I have the same problem with Theorem 1 in that I do not understand how one equates Þ with the joint distribution.

Equation (21) is much more illuminating (I find) than the previous explanation in that it exposes the fact that the principle is one of aiming at a new distribution for both the target and the importance function, with hopes that the fit will get better. It could have been better to avoid the notion of random transform, then, but this is mostly a matter of conveying the notion.

On more specifics points (or minutiae), the unboundedness of the likelihood is rarely if ever a problem when using EM. An alternative to the multiple start EM proposal would then be to get sequential and estimate the mixture in a sequential manner, only adding a component when it seems worth it. See eg Chopin and Pelgrin (2004) and Chopin (2007). This could also help with the bias mentioned therein since only a (tiny?) fraction of the data would be used. And the number of components K has an impact on the accuracy of the approximation, as in not missing a mode, and on the computing time. However my suggestion would be to avoid estimating K as this must be immensely costly.

Section 6 obviously relates to my folded Markov interests. If I understand correctly, the paper argues that the transformed density Þ does not need to be computed when considering the folding-move-unfolding step as a single step rather than three steps. I fear the description between equations (30) and (31) is missing the move step over the transformed space. Also on a personal basis I still do not see how to add this approach to our folding methodology, even though the different transforms act as as many replicas of the original Markov chain.

## Cauchy Distribution: Evil or Angel?

Posted in Books, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life, Wines with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 19, 2015 by xi'an

Natesh Pillai and Xiao-Li Meng just arXived a short paper that solves the Cauchy conjecture of Drton and Xiao [I mentioned last year at JSM], namely that, when considering two normal vectors with generic variance matrix S, a weighted average of the ratios X/Y remains Cauchy(0,1), just as in the iid S=I case. Even when the weights are random. The fascinating side of this now resolved (!) conjecture is that the correlation between the terms does not seem to matter. Pushing the correlation to one [assuming it is meaningful, which is a suspension of belief!, since there is no standard correlation for Cauchy variates] leads to a paradox: all terms are equal and yet… it works: we recover a single term, which again is Cauchy(0,1). All that remains thus to prove is that it stays Cauchy(0,1) between those two extremes, a weird kind of intermediary values theorem!

Actually, Natesh and XL further prove an inverse χ² theorem: the inverse of the normal vector, renormalised into a quadratic form is an inverse χ² no matter what its covariance matrix. The proof of this amazing theorem relies on a spherical representation of the bivariate Gaussian (also underlying the Box-Müller algorithm). The angles are then jointly distributed as

$\exp\{-\sum_{i,j}\alpha_{ij}\cos(\theta_i-\theta_j)\}$

and from there follows the argument that conditional on the differences between the θ’s, all ratios are Cauchy distributed. Hence the conclusion!

A question that stems from reading this version of the paper is whether this property extends to other formats of non-independent Cauchy variates. Somewhat connected to my recent post about generating correlated variates from arbitrary distributions: using the inverse cdf transform of a Gaussian copula shows this is possibly the case: the following code is meaningless in that the empirical correlation has no connection with a “true” correlation, but nonetheless the experiment seems of interest…

> ro=.999999;x=matrix(rnorm(2e4),ncol=2);y=ro*x+sqrt(1-ro^2)*matrix(rnorm(2e4),ncol=2)
> cor(x[,1]/x[,2],y[,1]/y[,2])
[1] -0.1351967
> ro=.99999999;x=matrix(rnorm(2e4),ncol=2);y=ro*x+sqrt(1-ro^2)*matrix(rnorm(2e4),ncol=2)
> cor(x[,1]/x[,2],y[,1]/y[,2])
[1] 0.8622714
> ro=1-1e-5;x=matrix(rnorm(2e4),ncol=2);y=ro*x+sqrt(1-ro^2)*matrix(rnorm(2e4),ncol=2)
> z=qcauchy(pnorm(as.vector(x)));w=qcauchy(pnorm(as.vector(y)))
> cor(x=z,y=w)
[1] 0.9999732
> ks.test((z+w)/2,"pcauchy")

One-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test

data:  (z + w)/2
D = 0.0068, p-value = 0.3203
alternative hypothesis: two-sided
> ro=1-1e-3;x=matrix(rnorm(2e4),ncol=2);y=ro*x+sqrt(1-ro^2)*matrix(rnorm(2e4),ncol=2)
> z=qcauchy(pnorm(as.vector(x)));w=qcauchy(pnorm(as.vector(y)))
> cor(x=z,y=w)
[1] 0.9920858
> ks.test((z+w)/2,"pcauchy")

One-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test

data:  (z + w)/2
D = 0.0036, p-value = 0.9574
alternative hypothesis: two-sided


## Posterior predictive p-values and the convex order

Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , on December 22, 2014 by xi'an

Patrick Rubin-Delanchy and Daniel Lawson [of Warhammer fame!] recently arXived a paper we had discussed with Patrick when he visited Andrew and I last summer in Paris. The topic is the evaluation of the posterior predictive probability of a larger discrepancy between data and model

$\mathbb{P}\left( f(X|\theta)\ge f(x^\text{obs}|\theta) \,|\,x^\text{obs} \right)$

which acts like a Bayesian p-value of sorts. I discussed several times the reservations I have about this notion on this blog… Including running one experiment on the uniformity of the ppp while in Duke last year. One item of those reservations being that it evaluates the posterior probability of an event that does not exist a priori. Which is somewhat connected to the issue of using the data “twice”.

“A posterior predictive p-value has a transparent Bayesian interpretation.”

Another item that was suggested [to me] in the current paper is the difficulty in defining the posterior predictive (pp), for instance by including latent variables

$\mathbb{P}\left( f(X,Z|\theta)\ge f(x^\text{obs},Z^\text{obs}|\theta) \,|\,x^\text{obs} \right)\,,$

which reminds me of the multiple possible avatars of the BIC criterion. The question addressed by Rubin-Delanchy and Lawson is how far from the uniform distribution stands this pp when the model is correct. The main result of their paper is that any sub-uniform distribution can be expressed as a particular posterior predictive. The authors also exhibit the distribution that achieves the bound produced by Xiao-Li Meng, Namely that

$\mathbb{P}(P\le \alpha) \le 2\alpha$

where P is the above (top) probability. (Hence it is uniform up to a factor 2!) Obviously, the proximity with the upper bound only occurs in a limited number of cases that do not validate the overall use of the ppp. But this is certainly a nice piece of theoretical work.

## XL definition of statistics in 24″

Posted in Books, Kids, Statistics, University life with tags , , , on September 22, 2013 by xi'an

Z-test, t-test, chi-squared test,

Bayes, Frequentist, Fiducial

Let me make you feel influential

Regression, Correlation, Causation,

What else can generate more passion?

Skewness, Kurtosis, Heteroscedasticity

Boy, do I feel sexy?

Xiao-Li Meng, at the Ig Nobel ceremony

## XL for 24/7 fame at (Ig) Nobel

Posted in Kids, Statistics, University life with tags , , , on September 12, 2013 by xi'an

Tonight, our friend Xiao-Li Meng will (no doubt brilliantly) deliver a 24/7 lecture at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. It will be webcast live, with a watching party in Paris…. (A wee too late for me, I am afraid.) Although Xiao-Li is quite able to lecture 24/7 on statistics, this special lecture will last 24 seconds plus 7 words. Bets are open for the 7 words!! (Note that, contrary to the other Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobel Prizes often include winners in mathematics and statistics.)