Posts tagged ‘Nested Sampling’

[ArXiv] 5th week, Jan. 2008

Some statistics papers were listed at the top, of which topics would interest some slog subscribers.
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An alternative to MCMC?

I think of Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) as a kind of directed staggering about, a random walk with a goal. (Sort of like driving in Boston.) It is conceptually simple to grasp as a way to explore the posterior probability distribution of the parameters of interest by sampling only where it is worth sampling from. Thus, a major savings from brute force Monte Carlo, and far more robust than downhill fitting programs. It also gives you the error bar on the parameter for free. What could be better? Continue reading ‘An alternative to MCMC?’ »