During this talk, I will present how the development of non-reversible algorithms by piecewise deterministic Markov processes (PDMP) was first motivated by the impressive successes of cluster algorithms for the simulation of lattice spin systems. I will especially stress how the spin involution symmetry crucial to the cluster schemes was replaced by the exploitation of more general symmetry, in particular thanks to the factorization of the energy function.[-]

This talk focuses on the estimation of the distribution of unobserved nodes in large random graphs from the observation of very few edges. These graphs naturally model tournaments involving a large number of players (the nodes) where the ability to win of each player is unknown. The players are only partially observed through discrete valued scores (edges) describing the results of contests between players. In this very sparse setting, we present the first nonasymptotic risk bounds for maximum likelihood estimators (MLE) of the unknown distribution of the nodes. The proof relies on the construction of a graphical model encoding conditional dependencies that is extremely efficient to study n-regular graphs obtained using a round-robin scheduling. This graphical model allows to prove geometric loss of memory properties and deduce the asymptotic behavior of the likelihood function. Following a classical construction in learning theory, the asymptotic likelihood is used to define a measure of performance for the MLE. Risk bounds for the MLE are finally obtained by subgaussian deviation results derived from concentration inequalities for Markov chains applied to our graphical model.[-]

In this short course, we recall the basics of Markov chain Monte Carlo (Gibbs & Metropolis sampelrs) along with the most recent developments like Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, Rao-Blackwellisation, divide & conquer strategies, pseudo-marginal and other noisy versions. We also cover the specific approximate method of ABC that is currently used in many fields to handle complex models in manageable conditions, from the original motivation in population genetics to the several reinterpretations of the approach found in the recent literature. Time allowing, we will also comment on the programming developments like BUGS, STAN and Anglican that stemmed from those specific algorithms.[-]

We first introduce the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. We then consider the Random Walk Metropolis algorithm on $R^n$ with Gaussian proposals, and when the target probability measure is the $n$-fold product of a one dimensional law. It is well-known that, in the limit $n$ tends to infinity, starting at equilibrium and for an appropriate scaling of the variance and of the timescale as a function of the dimension $n$, a diffusive limit is obtained for each component of the Markov chain. We generalize this result when the initial distribution is not the target probability measure. The obtained diffusive limit is the solution to a stochastic differential equation nonlinear in the sense of McKean. We prove convergence to equilibrium for this equation. We discuss practical counterparts in order to optimize the variance of the proposal distribution to accelerate convergence to equilibrium. Our analysis confirms the interest of the constant acceptance rate strategy (with acceptance rate between 1/4 and 1/3).[-]

Consider a problem of Markovian trajectories of particles for which you are trying to estimate the probability of a event.
Under the assumption that you can represent this event as the last event of a nested sequence of events, it is possible to design a splitting algorithm to estimate the probability of the last event in an efficient way. Moreover you can obtain a sequence of trajectories which realize this particular event, giving access to statistical representation of quantities conditionally to realize the event.
In this talk I will present the "Adaptive Multilevel Splitting" algorithm and its application to various toy models. I will explain why it creates an unbiased estimator of a probability, and I will give results obtained from numerical simulations.[-]

This course presents an overview of modern Bayesian strategies for solving imaging inverse problems. We will start by introducing the Bayesian statistical decision theory framework underpinning Bayesian analysis, and then explore efficient numerical methods for performing Bayesian computation in large-scale settings. We will pay special attention to high-dimensional imaging models that are log-concave w.r.t. the unknown image, related to so-called “convex imaging problems”. This will provide an opportunity to establish connections with the convex optimisation and machine learning approaches to imaging, and to discuss some of their relative strengths and drawbacks. Examples of topics covered in the course include: efficient stochastic simulation and optimisation numerical methods that tightly combine proximal convex optimisation with Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques; strategies for estimating unknown model parameters and performing model selection, methods for calculating Bayesian confidence intervals for images and performing uncertainty quantification analyses; and new theory regarding the role of convexity in maximum-a-posteriori and minimum-mean-square-error estimation. The theory, methods, and algorithms are illustrated with a range of mathematical imaging experiments.[-]

This course presents an overview of modern Bayesian strategies for solving imaging inverse problems. We will start by introducing the Bayesian statistical decision theory framework underpinning Bayesian analysis, and then explore efficient numerical methods for performing Bayesian computation in large-scale settings. We will pay special attention to high-dimensional imaging models that are log-concave w.r.t. the unknown image, related to so-called “convex imaging problems”. This will provide an opportunity to establish connections with the convex optimisation and machine learning approaches to imaging, and to discuss some of their relative strengths and drawbacks. Examples of topics covered in the course include: efficient stochastic simulation and optimisation numerical methods that tightly combine proximal convex optimisation with Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques; strategies for estimating unknown model parameters and performing model selection, methods for calculating Bayesian confidence intervals for images and performing uncertainty quantification analyses; and new theory regarding the role of convexity in maximum-a-posteriori and minimum-mean-square-error estimation. The theory, methods, and algorithms are illustrated with a range of mathematical imaging experiments.[-]

This course presents an overview of modern Bayesian strategies for solving imaging inverse problems. We will start by introducing the Bayesian statistical decision theory framework underpinning Bayesian analysis, and then explore efficient numerical methods for performing Bayesian computation in large-scale settings. We will pay special attention to high-dimensional imaging models that are log-concave w.r.t. the unknown image, related to so-called “convex imaging problems”. This will provide an opportunity to establish connections with the convex optimisation and machine learning approaches to imaging, and to discuss some of their relative strengths and drawbacks. Examples of topics covered in the course include: efficient stochastic simulation and optimisation numerical methods that tightly combine proximal convex optimisation with Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques; strategies for estimating unknown model parameters and performing model selection, methods for calculating Bayesian confidence intervals for images and performing uncertainty quantification analyses; and new theory regarding the role of convexity in maximum-a-posteriori and minimum-mean-square-error estimation. The theory, methods, and algorithms are illustrated with a range of mathematical imaging experiments.[-]

Learning neural networks using only a small amount of data is an important ongoing research topic with tremendous potential for applications. We introduce a regularizer for the variational modeling of inverse problems in imaging based on normalizing flows, called patchNR. It involves a normalizing flow learned on patches of very few images. The subsequent reconstruction method is completely unsupervised and the same regularizer can be used for different forward operators acting on the same class of images.
By investigating the distribution of patches versus those of the whole image class, we prove that our variational model is indeed a MAP approach. Numerical examples for low-dose CT, limited-angle CT and superresolution of material images demonstrate that our method provides high quality results among unsupervised methods, but requires only very few data. Further, the appoach also works if only the low resolution image is available.
In the second part of the talk I will generalize normalizing flows to stochastic normalizing flows to improve their expressivity.Normalizing flows, diffusion normalizing flows and variational autoencoders are powerful generative models. A unified framework to handle these approaches appear to be Markov chains. We consider stochastic normalizing flows as a pair of Markov chains fulfilling some properties and show how many state-of-the-art models for data generation fit into this framework. Indeed including stochastic layers improves the expressivity of the network and allows for generating multimodal distributions from unimodal ones. The Markov chains point of view enables us to couple both deterministic layers as invertible neural networks and stochastic layers as Metropolis-Hasting layers, Langevin layers, variational autoencoders and diffusion normalizing flows in a mathematically sound way. Our framework establishes a useful mathematical tool to combine the various approaches.
Joint work with F. Altekrüger, A. Denker, P. Hagemann, J. Hertrich, P. Maass[-]