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Journal ArticleDOI

Markov Chain Monte Carlo Convergence Diagnostics: A Comparative Review

TLDR
All of the methods in this work can fail to detect the sorts of convergence failure that they were designed to identify, so a combination of strategies aimed at evaluating and accelerating MCMC sampler convergence are recommended.
Abstract
A critical issue for users of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods in applications is how to determine when it is safe to stop sampling and use the samples to estimate characteristics of the distribution of interest. Research into methods of computing theoretical convergence bounds holds promise for the future but to date has yielded relatively little of practical use in applied work. Consequently, most MCMC users address the convergence problem by applying diagnostic tools to the output produced by running their samplers. After giving a brief overview of the area, we provide an expository review of 13 convergence diagnostics, describing the theoretical basis and practical implementation of each. We then compare their performance in two simple models and conclude that all of the methods can fail to detect the sorts of convergence failure that they were designed to identify. We thus recommend a combination of strategies aimed at evaluating and accelerating MCMC sampler convergence, including ap...

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Bayesian inference for smooth transition autoregressive (STAR) model: A prior sensitivity analysis

TL;DR: The joint posterior distribution of model order, coefficient, and implicit parameters in the logistic STAR model is presented, and the conditional posterior distributions are shown, followed by the design of a posterior simulator using a combination of Metropolis-Hastings, Gibbs Sampler, RJMCMC, and Multiple Try Metropolis algorithms.
Journal ArticleDOI

Bayesian modeling and optimization for multi-response surfaces

TL;DR: It is shown that the Bayesian SUR models can provide more flexible and accurate modeling than the standard multivariate regression (SMR) models with the same covariate structure across different responses.
Journal ArticleDOI

Selection for increased body length in Subantarctic fur seals on Amsterdam Island.

TL;DR: Using a Bayesian multi‐trait ‘animal model’, the quantitative genetics of body size, a fitness‐related trait, in Subantarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus tropicalis) breeding on Amsterdam Island, Southern Ocean is investigated.
Journal ArticleDOI

Bayesian Accelerated Life Testing under Competing Weibull Causes of Failure

TL;DR: In this paper, a general stress translation function of location parameter of the component log-lifetime distribution is proposed which can accommodate standard ones like Arrhenius, power-rule, loglinear model, etc., as special cases.
Proceedings ArticleDOI

Predictability and Prediction of Human Mobility Based on Application-Collected Location Data

TL;DR: This paper implements a clustering method based on the contextual information that cluster the locations into three divisions, street, district and region and employs a high-order Markov chain model to predict the most likely locations visited by each user.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Equation of state calculations by fast computing machines

TL;DR: In this article, a modified Monte Carlo integration over configuration space is used to investigate the properties of a two-dimensional rigid-sphere system with a set of interacting individual molecules, and the results are compared to free volume equations of state and a four-term virial coefficient expansion.
Journal ArticleDOI

Stochastic Relaxation, Gibbs Distributions, and the Bayesian Restoration of Images

TL;DR: The analogy between images and statistical mechanics systems is made and the analogous operation under the posterior distribution yields the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimate of the image given the degraded observations, creating a highly parallel ``relaxation'' algorithm for MAP estimation.
Journal ArticleDOI

Monte Carlo Sampling Methods Using Markov Chains and Their Applications

TL;DR: A generalization of the sampling method introduced by Metropolis et al. as mentioned in this paper is presented along with an exposition of the relevant theory, techniques of application and methods and difficulties of assessing the error in Monte Carlo estimates.
Journal ArticleDOI

Inference from Iterative Simulation Using Multiple Sequences

TL;DR: The focus is on applied inference for Bayesian posterior distributions in real problems, which often tend toward normal- ity after transformations and marginalization, and the results are derived as normal-theory approximations to exact Bayesian inference, conditional on the observed simulations.
Journal ArticleDOI

Robust Locally Weighted Regression and Smoothing Scatterplots

TL;DR: Robust locally weighted regression as discussed by the authors is a method for smoothing a scatterplot, in which the fitted value at z k is the value of a polynomial fit to the data using weighted least squares, where the weight for (x i, y i ) is large if x i is close to x k and small if it is not.
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