Coupled conditional backward sampling particle filter
The conditional particle filter (CPF) is a promising algorithm for general hidden Markov model smoothing. Empirical evidence suggests that the variant of CPF with backward sampling (CBPF) performs well even with long time series. Previous theoretical results have not been able to demonstrate the improvement brought by backward sampling, whereas we provide rates showing that CBPF can remain effective with a fixed number of particles independent of the time horizon. Our result is based on analysis of a new coupling of two CBPFs, the coupled conditional backward sampling particle filter (CCBPF). We show that CCBPF has good stability properties in the sense that with fixed number of particles, …
Theoretical and methodological aspects of MCMC computations with noisy likelihoods
Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) [11, 42] is a popular method for Bayesian inference involving an intractable, or expensive to evaluate, likelihood function but where simulation from the model is easy. The method consists of defining an alternative likelihood function which is also in general intractable but naturally lends itself to pseudo-marginal computations [5], hence making the approach of practical interest. The aim of this chapter is to show the connections of ABC Markov chain Monte Carlo with pseudo-marginal algorithms, review their existing theoretical results, and discuss how these can inform practice and hopefully lead to fruitful methodological developments. peerReviewed
Uniform ergodicity of the iterated conditional SMC and geometric ergodicity of particle Gibbs samplers
We establish quantitative bounds for rates of convergence and asymptotic variances for iterated conditional sequential Monte Carlo (i-cSMC) Markov chains and associated particle Gibbs samplers. Our main findings are that the essential boundedness of potential functions associated with the i-cSMC algorithm provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the uniform ergodicity of the i-cSMC Markov chain, as well as quantitative bounds on its (uniformly geometric) rate of convergence. Furthermore, we show that the i-cSMC Markov chain cannot even be geometrically ergodic if this essential boundedness does not hold in many applications of interest. Our sufficiency and quantitative bounds rely on…