ICML 2018oral20 citations

Kernel Recursive ABC: Point Estimation with Intractable Likelihood

Takafumi Kajihara, Motonobu Kanagawa, Keisuke Yamazaki, Kenji Fukumizu

Abstract

We propose a novel approach to parameter estimation for simulator-based statistical models with intractable likelihood. Our proposed method involves recursive application of kernel ABC and kernel herding to the same observed data. We provide a theoretical explanation regarding why the approach works, showing (for the population setting) that, under a certain assumption, point estimates obtained with this method converge to the true parameter, as recursion proceeds. We have conducted a variety of numerical experiments, including parameter estimation for a real-world pedestrian flow simulator, and show that in most cases our method outperforms existing approaches.

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v80-kajihara18a,
  title = 	 {Kernel Recursive {ABC}: Point Estimation with Intractable Likelihood},
  author =       {Kajihara, Takafumi and Kanagawa, Motonobu and Yamazaki, Keisuke and Fukumizu, Kenji},
  booktitle = 	 {Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Machine Learning},
  pages = 	 {2400--2409},
  year = 	 {2018},
  editor = 	 {Dy, Jennifer and Krause, Andreas},
  volume = 	 {80},
  series = 	 {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research},
  month = 	 {10--15 Jul},
  publisher =    {PMLR},
  pdf = 	 {http://proceedings.mlr.press/v80/kajihara18a/kajihara18a.pdf},
  url = 	 {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v80/kajihara18a.html},
  abstract = 	 {We propose a novel approach to parameter estimation for simulator-based statistical models with intractable likelihood. Our proposed method involves recursive application of kernel ABC and kernel herding to the same observed data. We provide a theoretical explanation regarding why the approach works, showing (for the population setting) that, under a certain assumption, point estimates obtained with this method converge to the true parameter, as recursion proceeds. We have conducted a variety of numerical experiments, including parameter estimation for a real-world pedestrian flow simulator, and show that in most cases our method outperforms existing approaches.}
}
Kernel Recursive ABC: Point Estimation with Intractable Likelihood · ICML 2018