{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/generalized-posteriors-in-approximate","title":"Generalized Posteriors in Approximate Bayesian Computation","arxiv_id":"2011.08644","date":"2020-11-17","proceeding":"pproximateinference AABI Symposium 2021 1","authors":["Sebastian M Schmon","Patrick W Cannon","Jeremias Knoblauch"],"abstract":"Complex simulators have become a ubiquitous tool in many scientific disciplines, providing high-fidelity, implicit probabilistic models of natural and social phenomena. Unfortunately, they typically lack the tractability required for conventional statistical analysis. Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) has emerged as a key method in simulation-based inference, wherein the true model likelihood and posterior are approximated using samples from the simulator. In this paper, we draw connections between ABC and generalized Bayesian inference (GBI). First, we re-interpret the accept/reject step in ABC as an implicitly defined error model. We then argue that these implicit error models will invariably be misspecified. While ABC posteriors are often treated as a necessary evil for approximating the standard Bayesian posterior, this allows us to re-interpret ABC as a potential robustification strategy. This leads us to suggest the use of GBI within ABC, a use case we explore empirically.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.08644v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.08644v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"generalized-posteriors-in-approximate","repo_url":"https://github.com/improbable-research/gen-posterior-abc","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"bayesian-inference","task_name":"Bayesian Inference"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2011.08644","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2011.08644"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/improbable-research/gen-posterior-abc","reach":null}],"summary":{"ran_honours":2},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":2,"ran":2,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":0,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"c38002edbfdc9b51","entry":"summary_stats","repo":"improbable-research/gen-posterior-abc","repo_kind":"official","path":"gb_alg.py","file_url":"https://github.com/improbable-research/gen-posterior-abc/blob/HEAD/gb_alg.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_honours","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"HONOURS","metamorphic_tier":"invariant","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"c38002edbfdc9b51"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"e2fcb31b48017bb0","entry":"true_dgp","repo":"improbable-research/gen-posterior-abc","repo_kind":"official","path":"gb_alg.py","file_url":"https://github.com/improbable-research/gen-posterior-abc/blob/HEAD/gb_alg.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_honours","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"HONOURS","metamorphic_tier":"well_formed","behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"e2fcb31b48017bb0"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}