Archive for polar coordinates

ensemble Metropolis-Hastings

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

A question on X validated about ensemble MCMC samplers had me try twice to justify the Metropolis-Hasting ratio the authors used. To recap, ensemble sampling moves a cloud of points (just like our bouncy particle sampler) one point X at a time by using another point Z as a pivot or origin and moving randomly X along the line [XZ]. In the paper,  the distribution of the rescaling is symmetric in the sense that f(z)=f(1/z). I indeed started by perceiving the basic step of the sampler as a Metropolis-within-Gibbs step along a random direction. But it did not work as the direction depends on the current X. I then wondered at a possible importance sampling interpretation compensating for the change of scale, but it was leading to the wrong power anyway. Before hitting the fact that this was actually a change of radius in the space with origin Z, leaving the angular coordinates invariant. Which explained for the power (n-1) in the Metropolis ratio, in agreement with a switch to polar coordinates.