SearcharxivSearch

arXiv · 1906.12309

Consensus Monte Carlo for Random Subsets using Shared Anchors

Abstract

We present a consensus Monte Carlo algorithm that scales existing Bayesian nonparametric models for clustering and feature allocation to big data. The algorithm is valid for any prior on random subsets such as partitions and latent feature allocation, under essentially any sampling model. Motivated by three case studies, we focus on clustering induced by a Dirichlet process mixture sampling model, inference under an Indian buffet process prior with a binomial sampling model, and with a categorical sampling model. We assess the proposed algorithm with simulation studies and show results for inference with three datasets: an MNIST image dataset, a dataset of pancreatic cancer mutations, and a large set of electronic health records (EHR). Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Yang Ni, Yuan Ji, Peter Mueller. 2019-06-28. Consensus Monte Carlo for Random Subsets using Shared Anchors. https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.12309

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Estimating Hierarchically Rank Structured Covariance Matrices

We consider the problem of estimating a high-dimensional covariance matrix from a very limited number of samples. This problem is ubiquitous in computational fluid dynamics, where a small number of fluid snapshots must be used to construct a Gramian matrix determining a reduced-order model, as well as in computational geoscience, where a small ensemble of Earth system forecasts must be used to estimate the covariance matrix associated with the forecast uncertainty. It is common practice to regularize the small-sample covariance by imposing a "localization" structure that enforces a physically realistic correlation length scale, imposing a sparsity constraint, "shrinking" towards a prescribed target, or attenuating small correlations. We propose an alternate technique that regularizes the small-sample covariance by imposing hierarchical rank structure. Compared to regularization methods that assume sparsity such as spatial localization, hierarchical rank structure accommodates a wider range of covariance matrices, roughly corresponding to situations where long-range correlations vary more smoothly than short-range ones. It also results in a data-sparse matrix format that permits highly efficient matrix-vector products. We present theory and algorithms which show how to efficiently estimate a high-dimensional, hierarchically rank structured covariance matrix from limited samples. Through an error analysis and numerical experiments with a variety of model problems, we demonstrate that these techniques are effective at reducing sampling errors, and that in many cases they achieve smaller estimation error than conventional techniques.

stat.CO

Optimal Slice-Adaptive Tuning of Hybrid Slice Sampling

Slice sampling is a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm that draws its next state uniformly from a "slice"---a super-level set of the target density function---at each iteration, thereby providing automatic local adaptivity to the scale of the target. In practice the exact slice is not known, so general-purpose implementations use an approximate slice that is grown from a starting interval of length $w>0$, with a computational cost that depends on $w$. This work presents an analysis of the average per-iteration number of target density evaluations, as a function of $w$, of hybrid slice sampling with various slice-finding schemes for targets with contiguous slices. The paper uses the results of the analysis to develop automated, slice-adaptive tuning schemes along with suboptimality bounds and asymptotic convergence guarantees. Simulations demonstrate that the tuning schemes reliably yield near-optimal slice-adaptive tuning with essentially no dependence on the initial setting of $w$.

stat.CO