2010

Cruising The Simplex: Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and the Dirichlet Distribution

Betancourt, M. J.

Understand

Due to its constrained support, the Dirichlet distribution is uniquely suited to many applications.

  • The constraints that make it powerful, however, can also hinder practical implementations, particularly those utilizing Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques such as Hamiltonian Monte Carlo.
  • I demonstrate a series of transformations that reshape the canonical Dirichlet distribution into a form much more amenable to MCMC algorithms.

Built on

  • R. C. H. Cheng, in Handbook of Simulation: Principles, Methodology, Advances, Applications, and Practice , edited by Banks (Wiley & Sons, New York, 1998)

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    Earlier work this paper cites.

  • G. Marsaglia and W. W. Tsang, ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 26

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  • S. Hassani, Mathematical Physics: A Modern Introduction to Its Foundations (Springer, New York, 2002)

    2002

    Earlier work this paper cites.

Similar

  • D. MacKay, Information Theory, Inference, and Machine Learning (Cambridge University Press, New York, 2003)

    2003

    Cited alongside, same era.

  • J. Skilling, in Maximum Entropy and Bayesian methods in science and engineering , American Institute of Physics Conference Series, Vol. 735, edited by G. Erikson, J. T. Bercher, & C. R Smith (AIP Press, 2004) pp. 395–405

    2004

    Cited alongside, same era.

  • C. Bishop, Pattern Classification and Machine Learning (Springer, New York, 2007)

    2007

    Cited alongside, same era.

Then

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