Björn Sprungk

Daniel Rudolf, Björn Sprungk

Metropolis algorithms for approximate sampling of probability measures on infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces are considered and a generalization of the preconditioned Crank-Nicolson (pCN) proposal is introduced. The new proposal is able to incorporate information of the measure of interest. A numerical simulation of a Bayesian inverse problem indicates that a Metropolis algorithm with such a proposal performs independent of the state space dimension and the variance of the observational noise. Moreover, a qualitative convergence result is provided by a comparison argument for spectral gaps. In particular, it is shown that the generalization inherits geometric ergodicity from the Metropolis algorithm with pCN proposal.

Oliver G. Ernst, Björn Sprungk, Lorenzo Tamellini

We give a convergence proof for the approximation by sparse collocation of Hilbert-space-valued functions depending on countably many Gaussian random variables. Such functions appear as solutions of elliptic PDEs with lognormal diffusion coefficients. We outline a general $L^2$-convergence theory based on previous work by Bachmayr et al. (2016) and Chen (2016) and establish an algebraic convergence rate for sufficiently smooth functions assuming a mild growth bound for the univariate hierarchical surpluses of the interpolation scheme applied to Hermite polynomials. We verify specifically for Gauss-Hermite nodes that this assumption holds and also show algebraic convergence w.r.t. the resulting number of sparse grid points for this case. Numerical experiments illustrate the dimension-independent convergence rate.

Viacheslav Natarovskii, Daniel Rudolf, Björn Sprungk

For Bayesian learning, given likelihood function and Gaussian prior, the elliptical slice sampler, introduced by Murray, Adams and MacKay 2010, provides a tool for the construction of a Markov chain for approximate sampling of the underlying posterior distribution. Besides of its wide applicability and simplicity its main feature is that no tuning is necessary. Under weak regularity assumptions on the posterior density we show that the corresponding Markov chain is geometrically ergodic and therefore yield qualitative convergence guarantees. We illustrate our result for Gaussian posteriors as they appear in Gaussian process regression, as well as in a setting of a multi-modal distribution. Remarkably, our numerical experiments indicate a dimension-independent performance of elliptical slice sampling even in situations where our ergodicity result does not apply.

Ilja Klebanov, Björn Sprungk, T. J. Sullivan

The linear conditional expectation (LCE) provides a best linear (or rather, affine) estimate of the conditional expectation and hence plays an important rôle in approximate Bayesian inference, especially the Bayes linear approach. This article establishes the analytical properties of the LCE in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space context. In addition, working in the space of affine Hilbert--Schmidt operators, we establish a regularisation procedure for this LCE. As an important application, we obtain a simple alternative derivation and intuitive justification of the conditional mean embedding formula, a concept widely used in machine learning to perform the conditioning of random variables by embedding them into reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces.

Oliver G. Ernst, Björn Sprungk, Hans-Jörg Starkloff

We analyze the Ensemble and Polynomial Chaos Kalman filters applied to nonlinear stationary Bayesian inverse problems. In a sequential data assimilation setting such stationary problems arise in each step of either filter. We give a new interpretation of the approximations produced by these two popular filters in the Bayesian context and prove that, in the limit of large ensemble or high polynomial degree, both methods yield approximations which converge to a well-defined random variable termed the analysis random variable. We then show that this analysis variable is more closely related to a specific linear Bayes estimator than to the solution of the associated Bayesian inverse problem given by the posterior measure. This suggests limited or at least guarded use of these generalized Kalman filter methods for the purpose of uncertainty quantification.