Papers › Monte Carlo sampling with integrator snippets

Monte Carlo sampling with integrator snippets

20 Apr 2024arXiv:2404.13302links table onlyarchive 2025-07-28

Christophe Andrieu, Mauro Camara Escudero, Chang Zhang

The archive published only this paper's code-link row. Authors, date and abstract are from arXiv's metadata (CC0), read from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12 where its title matched the archive's; the title is the archive's.

Assume interest is in sampling from a probability distribution μ defined on (𝖹,𝒵). We develop a framework for sampling algorithms which takes full advantage of ODE numerical integrators, say ψ𝖹→𝖹 for one integration step, to explore μ efficiently and robustly. The popular Hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm \cite{duane1987hybrid,neal2011mcmc} and its derivatives are examples of such a use of numerical integrators. A key idea developed here is that of sampling integrator snippets, that is fragments of the orbit of an ODE numerical integrator ψ, and the definition of an associated probability distribution μ̅ such that expectations with respect to μ can be estimated from integrator snippets distributed according to μ̅. The integrator snippet target distribution μ̅ takes the form of a mixture of pushforward distributions which suggests numerous generalisations beyond mappings arising from numerical integrators, e.g. normalising flows. Very importantly this structure also suggests new principled and robust strategies to tune the parameters of integrators, such as the discretisation stepsize, effective integration time, or number of integration steps, in a Leapfrog integrator. We focus here primarily on Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) algorithms, but the approach can be used in the context of Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms. We illustrate performance and, in particular, robustness through numerical experiments and provide preliminary theoretical results supporting observed performance.

PaperPDFCode

Code

mauroce/integratorsnippets officialmentioned in papermentioned on GitHub report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections