 Mode Jumping Proposals in MCMCHakon Tjelmeland and Bjorn Kare Hegstad Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, 2001, vol. 28, issue 1, 205-223 Abstract: Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms generate samples from a target distribution by simulating a Markov chain. Large flexibility exists in specification of transition matrix of the chain. In practice, however, most algorithms used only allow small changes in the state vector in each iteration. This choice typically causes problems for multi‐modal distributions as moves between modes become rare and, in turn, results in slow convergence to the target distribution. In this paper we consider continuous distributions on Rn and specify how optimization for local maxima of the target distribution can be incorporated in the specification of the Markov chain. Thereby, we obtain a chain with frequent jumps between modes. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach in three examples. The first considers a simple mixture of bivariate normal distributions, whereas the two last examples consider sampling from posterior distributions based on previously analysed data sets. Date: 2001 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:scjsta:v:28:y:2001:i:1:p:205-223 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Scandinavian Journal of Statistics is currently edited by ÿrnulf Borgan and Bo Lindqvist More articles in Scandinavian Journal of Statistics from Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics, Finnish Statistical Society, Norwegian Statistical Association, Swedish Statistical Association |
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