The latest [June] issue of Statistics & Computing is full of interesting Bayesian and Monte Carlo entries, some of which are even open access!
Computation of Gaussian orthant probabilities in high dimension
James Ridgway Pages 899-916
Daniel Seita, Haoyu Chen, and John Canny arXived last week a paper entitled “Fast parallel SAME Gibbs sampling on general discrete Bayesian networks“. The distributions of the observables are defined by full conditional probability tables on the nodes of a graphical model. The distributions on the latent or missing nodes of the network are multinomial, with Dirichlet priors. To derive the MAP in such models, although this goal is not explicitly stated in the paper till the second page, the authors refer to the recent paper by Zhao et al. (2015), discussed on the ‘Og just as recently, which applies our SAME methodology. Since the paper is mostly computational (and submitted to ICLR 2016, which takes place juuust before AISTATS 2016), I do not have much to comment about it. Except to notice that the authors mention our paper as “Technical report, Statistics and Computing, 2002”. I am not sure the editor of Statistics and Computing will appreciate! The proper reference is in Statistics and Computing, 12:77-84, 2002.
“We argue that SAME is beneficial for Gibbs sampling because it helps to reduce excess variance.”
Still, I am a wee bit surprised at both the above statement and at the comparison with a JAGS implementation. Because SAME augments the number of latent vectors as the number of iterations increases, so should be slower by a mere curse of dimension,, slower than a regular Gibbs with a single latent vector. And because I do not get either the connection with JAGS: SAME could be programmed in JAGS, couldn’t it? If the authors means a regular Gibbs sampler with no latent vector augmentation, the comparison makes little sense as one algorithm aims at the MAP (with a modest five replicas), while the other encompasses the complete posterior distribution. But this sounds unlikely when considering that the larger the number m of replicas the better their alternative to JAGS. It would thus be interesting to understand what the authors mean by JAGS in this setup!
[verbatim from the call for papers:]
Statistics and Computing is preparing a special issue on Bayesian Nonparametrics, for publication by early 2016. We invite researchers to submit manuscripts for publication in the special issue. We expect that the focus theme will increase the visibility and impact of papers in the volume.
By making use of infinite-dimensional mathematical structures, Bayesian nonparametric statistics allows the complexity of a learned model to grow as the size of a data set grows. This flexibility can be particularly suited to modern data sets but can also present a number of computational and modelling challenges. In this special issue, we will showcase novel applications of Bayesian nonparametric models, new computational tools and algorithms for learning these models, and new models for the diverse structures and relations that may be present in data.
To submit to the special issue, please use the Statistics and Computing online submission system. To indicate consideration for the special issue, choose “Special Issue: Bayesian Nonparametrics” as the article type. Papers must be prepared in accordance with the Statistics and Computing journal guidelines.
Papers will go through the usual peer review process. The special issue website will be updated with any relevant deadlines and information.
Deadline for manuscript submission: August 20, 2015
Matt Moores, Tony Pettitt, and Kerrie Mengersen arXived a paper yesterday comparing different computational approaches to the processing of hidden Potts models and of the intractable normalising constant in the Potts model. This is a very interesting paper, first because it provides a comprehensive survey of the main methods used in handling this annoying normalising constant Z(β), namely pseudo-likelihood, the exchange algorithm, path sampling (a.k.a., thermal integration), and ABC. A massive simulation experiment with individual simulation times up to 400 hours leads to select path sampling (what else?!) as the (XL) method of choice. Thanks to a pre-computation of the expectation of the sufficient statistic E[S(Z)|β]. I just wonder why the same was not done for ABC, as in the recent Statistics and Computing paper we wrote with Matt and Kerrie. As it happens, I was actually discussing yesterday in Columbia of potential if huge improvements in processing Ising and Potts models by approximating first the distribution of S(X) for some or all β before launching ABC or the exchange algorithm. (In fact, this is a more generic desiderata for all ABC methods that simulating directly if approximately the summary statistics would being huge gains in computing time, thus possible in final precision.) Simulating the distribution of the summary and sufficient Potts statistic S(X) reduces to simulating this distribution with a null correlation, as exploited in Cucala and Marin (2013, JCGS, Special ICMS issue). However, there does not seem to be an efficient way to do so, i.e. without reverting to simulating the entire grid X…
With my friends Peter Green (Bristol), Krzysztof Łatuszyński (Warwick) and Marcello Pereyra (Bristol), we just arXived the first version of “Bayesian computation: a perspective on the current state, and sampling backwards and forwards”, which first title was the title of this post. This is a survey of our own perspective on Bayesian computation, from what occurred in the last 25 years [a lot!] to what could occur in the near future [a lot as well!]. Submitted to Statistics and Computing towards the special 25th anniversary issue, as announced in an earlier post.. Pulling strength and breadth from each other’s opinion, we have certainly attained more than the sum of our initial respective contributions, but we are welcoming comments about bits and pieces of importance that we miss and even more about promising new directions that are not posted in this survey. (A warning that is should go with most of my surveys is that my input in this paper will not differ by a large margin from ideas expressed here or in previous surveys.)
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