Gaussian Invariant Markov Chain Monte Carlo

Michalis K. Titsias; Angelos Alexopoulos; Siran Liu; Petros Dellaportas

stat.MLJun 26, 2025

Gaussian Invariant Markov Chain Monte Carlo

Authors: Michalis K. Titsias, Angelos Alexopoulos, Siran Liu, Petros Dellaportas

Organizations: Google DeepMind, UK · Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece · UCL, UK

Abstract

We develop sampling methods, which consist of Gaussian invariant versions of random walk Metropolis (RWM), Metropolis adjusted Langevin algorithm (MALA) and second order Hessian or Manifold MALA. Unlike standard RWM and MALA, we show that Gaussian invariant sampling can lead to ergodic estimators with improved statistical efficiency. This is due to a remarkable property of Gaussian invariance that allows us to obtain exact analytical solutions to the Poisson equation for Gaussian targets. These solutions can be used to construct efficient and easy to use control variates for variance reduction of estimators under any intractable target. We demonstrate the new samplers and estimators in several examples, including high dimensional targets in latent Gaussian models where we compare against several advanced methods and obtain state-of-the-art results. We also provide theoretical results regarding geometric ergodicity, and an optimal scaling analysis that shows the dependence of the optimal acceptance rate on the Gaussianity of the target.

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