Hamiltonian Monte Carlo with categorical parameters using the Concrete distribution

Published: 27 May 2024, Last Modified: 12 Jul 2024AABI 2024EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY 4.0
Keywords: Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, MCMC, Probabilistic machine learning, Gumbel max trick
TL;DR: We introduce a method to enable Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) to simulate from mixed continuous and discrete posterior distributions.
Abstract: We introduce a method to enable Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) to simulate from mixed continuous and discrete posterior distributions. In particular, we show how the "Gumbel Max Trick" and the Concrete (Gumbel-softmax) distribution can be used for constructing a continuous approximation of a categorical distribution, and how this distribution can be efficiently implemented for HMC. We also illustrate how the Concrete distribution can be incorporated into a latent discrete parameter model, resulting in the Concrete Mixture model.
Submission Number: 13
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