We study Monte Carlo estimation of the expected value of sample information (EVSI) which measures the expected benefit of gaining additional information for decision making under uncertainty. EVSI is defined as a nested expectation in which an outer expectation is taken with respect to one random variable $Y$ and an inner conditional expectation with respect to the other random variable $θ$. Although the nested (Markov chain) Monte Carlo estimator has been often used in this context, a root-mean-square accuracy of $\varepsilon$ is achieved notoriously at a cost of $O(\varepsilon^{-2-1/α})$, where $α$ denotes the order of convergence of the bias and is typically between $1/2$ and $1$. In this article we propose a novel efficient Monte Carlo estimator of EVSI by applying a multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) method. Instead of fixing the number of inner samples for $θ$ as done in the nested Monte Carlo estimator, we consider a geometric progression on the number of inner samples, which yields a hierarchy of estimators on the inner conditional expectation with increasing approximation levels. Based on an elementary telescoping sum, our MLMC estimator is given by a sum of the Monte Carlo estimates of the differences between successive approximation levels on the inner conditional expectation. We show, under a set of assumptions on decision and information models, that successive approximation levels are tightly coupled, which directly proves that our MLMC estimator improves the necessary computational cost to optimal $O(\varepsilon^{-2})$. Numerical experiments confirm the considerable computational savings as compared to the nested Monte Carlo estimator.
We propose a control variate multilevel Monte Carlo method for the kinetic BGK model of the Boltzmann equation subject to random inputs. The method combines a multilevel Monte Carlo technique with the computation of the optimal control variate multipliers derived from local or global variance minimization problems. Consistency and convergence analysis for the method equipped with a second-order positivity-preserving and asymptotic-preserving scheme in space and time is also performed. Various numerical examples confirm that the optimized multilevel Monte Carlo method outperforms the classical …
Inspired by the latest developments in multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) methods and randomised sketching for linear algebra problems we propose a MLMC estimator for real-time processing of matrix structured random data. Our algorithm is particularly effective in handling high-dimensional inner products and matrix multiplication, in applications of image analysis and large-scale supervised learning.
We present an adaptive multilevel Monte Carlo algorithm for solving the stochastic drift-diffusion-Poisson system with non-zero recombination rate. The a-posteriori error is estimated to enable goal-oriented adaptive mesh refinement for the spatial dimensions, while the a-priori error is estimated to guarantee \red{linear} convergence of the $H^1$ error. In the adaptive mesh refinement, efficient estimation of the error indicator gives rise to better error control. For the stochastic dimensions, we use the multilevel Monte Carlo method to solve this system of stochastic partial differential eq…
We consider conservation laws with discontinuous flux where the initial datum, the flux function, and the discontinuous spatial dependency coefficient are subject to randomness. We establish a notion of random adapted entropy solutions to these equations and prove well-posedness provided that the spatial dependency coefficient is piecewise constant with finitely many discontinuities. In particular, the setting under consideration allows the flux to change across finitely many points in space whose positions are uncertain. We propose a single- and multilevel Monte Carlo method based on a finite…
We design and implement a novel algorithm for computing a multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) estimator of the cumulative distribution function of a quantity of interest in problems with random input parameters or initial conditions. Our approach combines a standard MLMC method with stratified sampling by replacing standard Monte Carlo at each level with stratified Monte Carlo with proportional allocation. We show that the resulting stratified MLMC algorithm is more efficient than its standard MLMC counterpart, due to the reduction in variance at each level provided by the stratification of the rand…
The multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) method has been used for a wide variety of stochastic applications. In this paper we consider its use in situations in which input random variables can be replaced by similar approximate random variables which can be computed much more cheaply. A nested MLMC approach is adopted in which a two-level treatment of the approximated random variables is embedded within a standard MLMC application. We analyse the resulting nested MLMC variance in the specific context of an SDE discretisation in which Normal random variables can be replaced by approximately Normal ran…
We develop a novel multilevel asymptotic-preserving Monte Carlo method, called Multilevel Kinetic-Diffusion Monte Carlo (ML-KDMC), for simulating the kinetic Boltzmann transport equation with a Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) collision operator. This equation occurs, for instance, in mathematical models of the neutral particles in the plasma edge of nuclear fusion reactors. In this context, the Kinetic-Diffusion Monte Carlo method is known to maintain accuracy both in the low-collisional and the high-collisional limit, without an exploding simulation cost in the latter. We show that, by situating …
I consider the problem of integrating a function $f$ over the $d$-dimensional unit cube. I describe a multilevel Monte Carlo method that estimates the integral with variance at most $ε^{2}$ in $O(d+\ln(d)d_{t}ε^{-2})$ time, for $ε>0$, where $d_{t}$ is the truncation dimension of $f$. In contrast, the standard Monte Carlo method typically achieves such variance in $O(dε^{-2})$ time. A lower bound of order $d+d_{t}ε^{-2}$ is described for a class of multilevel Monte Carlo methods.
In this work we develop a new hierarchical multilevel approach to generate Gaussian random field realizations in an algorithmically scalable manner that is well-suited to incorporate into multilevel Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. This approach builds off of other partial differential equation (PDE) approaches for generating Gaussian random field realizations; in particular, a single field realization may be formed by solving a reaction-diffusion PDE with a spatial white noise source function as the righthand side. While these approaches have been explored to accelerate forward unc…
We consider the problem of estimating the probability of a large loss from a financial portfolio, where the future loss is expressed as a conditional expectation. Since the conditional expectation is intractable in most cases, one may resort to nested simulation. To reduce the complexity of nested simulation, we present a method that combines multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) and quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC). In the outer simulation, we use Monte Carlo to generate financial scenarios. In the inner simulation, we use QMC to estimate the portfolio loss in each scenario. We prove that using QMC can accele…
We propose a multilevel Monte Carlo method for a particle-based asymptotic-preserving scheme for kinetic equations. Kinetic equations model transport and collision of particles in a position-velocity phase-space. With a diffusive scaling, the kinetic equation converges to an advection-diffusion equation in the limit of zero mean free path. Classical particle-based techniques suffer from a strict time-step restriction to maintain stability in this limit. Asymptotic-preserving schemes provide a solution to this time step restriction, but introduce a first-order error in the time step size. We de…
An optimal experimental set-up maximizes the value of data for statistical inferences and predictions. The efficiency of strategies for finding optimal experimental set-ups is particularly important for experiments that are time-consuming or expensive to perform. For instance, in the situation when the experiments are modeled by Partial Differential Equations (PDEs), multilevel methods have been proven to dramatically reduce the computational complexity of their single-level counterparts when estimating expected values. For a setting where PDEs can model experiments, we propose two multilevel …
Goal-Oriented Adaptive Finite Element Multilevel Quasi-Monte Carlo
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals（国王法赫德石油矿物大学）；King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)（阿卜杜拉国王科技大学）；RWTH Aachen University（亚琛工业大学）
We propose a novel $hp$-multilevel Monte Carlo method for the quantification of uncertainties in the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, using the Discontinuous Galerkin method as deterministic solver. The multilevel approach exploits hierarchies of uniformly refined meshes while simultaneously increasing the polynomial degree of the ansatz space. It allows for a very large range of resolutions in the physical space and thus an efficient decrease of the statistical error. We prove that the overall complexity of the $hp$-multilevel Monte Carlo method to compute the mean field with prescribed …
Stochastic PDE eigenvalue problems are useful models for quantifying the uncertainty in several applications from the physical sciences and engineering, e.g., structural vibration analysis, the criticality of a nuclear reactor or photonic crystal structures. In this paper we present a multilevel quasi-Monte Carlo (MLQMC) method for approximating the expectation of the minimal eigenvalue of an elliptic eigenvalue problem with coefficients that are given as a series expansion of countably-many stochastic parameters. The MLQMC algorithm is based on a hierarchy of discretisations of the spatial do…
A novel algorithm for computing the action of a matrix exponential over a vector is proposed. The algorithm is based on a multilevel Monte Carlo method, and the vector solution is computed probabilistically generating suitable random paths which evolve through the indices of the matrix according to a suitable probability law. The computational complexity is proved in this paper to be significantly better than the classical Monte Carlo method, which allows the computation of much more accurate solutions. Furthermore, the positive features of the algorithm in terms of parallelism were exploited …
In this work, we study the approximation of expected values of functional quantities on the solution of a stochastic differential equation (SDE), where we replace the Monte Carlo estimation with the evaluation of a deep neural network. Once the neural network training is done, the evaluation of the resulting approximating function is computationally highly efficient so that using deep neural networks to replace costly Monte Carlo integration is appealing, e.g., for near real-time computations in quantitative finance. However, the drawback of these nowadays widespread ideas lies in the fact tha…
Kinetic equations model distributions of particles in position-velocity phase space. Often, one is interested in studying the long-time behavior of particles in high-collisional regimes in which an approximate (advection)-diffusion model holds. In this paper we consider the diffusive scaling. Classical particle-based techniques suffer from a strict time-step restriction in this limit, to maintain stability. Asymptotic-preserving schemes avoid this problem, but introduce an additional time discretization error, possibly resulting in an unacceptably large bias for larger time steps. Here, we pre…
This paper considers the problem of optimizing the average tracking error for an elliptic partial differential equation with an uncertain lognormal diffusion coefficient. In particular, the application of the multilevel quasi-Monte Carlo (MLQMC) method to the estimation of the gradient is investigated, with a circulant embedding method used to sample the stochastic field. A novel regularity analysis of the adjoint variable is essential for the MLQMC estimation of the gradient in combination with the samples generated using the CE method. A rigorous cost and error analysis shows that a randomly…
We present a novel approach which aims at high-performance uncertainty quantification for cardiac electrophysiology simulations. Employing the monodomain equation to model the transmembrane potential inside the cardiac cells, we evaluate the effect of spatially correlated perturbations of the heart fibers on the statistics of the resulting quantities of interest. Our methodology relies on a close integration of multilevel quadrature methods, parallel iterative solvers and space-time finite element discretizations, allowing for a fully parallelized framework in space, time and stochastics. Exte…
By adopting a Multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) framework, we show that only a handful of costly fine scale computations are needed to accurately estimate statistics of the failure of a composite structure, as opposed to the thousands typically needed in classical Monte Carlo analyses. We introduce the MLMC method, compare its theoretical complexity with classical Monte Carlo, and give a simple-to-implement algorithm which includes a simple extension called MLMC with selective refinement to efficiently calculated structural failure probabilities. To demonstrate the huge computational gains we pres…
Practical structural engineering problems are often characterized by significant uncertainties. Historically, one of the prevalent methods to account for this uncertainty has been the standard Monte Carlo (MC) method. Recently, improved sampling methods have been proposed, based on the idea of variance reduction by employing a hierarchy of mesh refinements. We combine an h- and p-refinement hierarchy with the Multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) and Multilevel Quasi-Monte Carlo (MLQMC) method. We investigate the applicability of these novel combination methods on three structural engineering problems…
The subsurface flow is usually subject to uncertain porous media structures. In most cases, however, we only have partial knowledge about the porous media properties. A common approach is to model the uncertain parameters of porous media as random fields, then the statistical moments (e.g. expectation) of the Quantity of Interest(QoI) can be evaluated by the Monte Carlo method. In this study, we develop a full multigrid-multilevel Monte Carlo (FMG-MLMC) method to speed up the evaluation of random parameters effects on single-phase porous flows. In general, MLMC method applies a series of discr…
General elliptic equations with spatially discontinuous diffusion coefficients may be used as a simplified model for subsurface flow in heterogeneous or fractured porous media. In such a model, data sparsity and measurement errors are often taken into account by a randomization of the diffusion coefficient of the elliptic equation which reveals the necessity of the construction of flexible, spatially discontinuous random fields. Subordinated Gaussian random fields are random functions on higher dimensional parameter domains with discontinuous sample paths and great distributional flexibility. …
In this paper, we evaluate the performance of the multilevel Monte Carlo method (MLMC) for deterministic and uncertain hyperbolic systems, where randomness is introduced either in the modeling parameters or in the approximation algorithms. MLMC is a well known variance reduction method widely used to accelerate Monte Carlo (MC) sampling. However, we demonstrate in this paper that for hyperbolic systems, whether MLMC can achieve a real boost turns out to be delicate. The computational costs of MLMC and MC depend on the interplay among the accuracy (bias) and the computational cost of the numeri…
Stochastic PDE eigenvalue problems often arise in the field of uncertainty quantification, whereby one seeks to quantify the uncertainty in an eigenvalue, or its eigenfunction. In this paper we present an efficient multilevel quasi-Monte Carlo (MLQMC) algorithm for computing the expectation of the smallest eigenvalue of an elliptic eigenvalue problem with stochastic coefficients. Each sample evaluation requires the solution of a PDE eigenvalue problem, and so tackling this problem in practice is notoriously computationally difficult. We speed up the approximation of this expectation in four wa…
Multilevel ensemble Kalman filtering for spatially extended models
Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg（奥尔登堡卡尔·冯·奥西茨基大学）；University of Oslo（奥斯陆大学）；Oak Ridge National Laboratory（橡树岭国家实验室）；École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne（洛桑联邦理工学院）；KAUST（阿卜杜拉国王科技大学）
Multilevel Sequential Monte Carlo Samplers for Normalizing Constants
Center INRIA Bordeaux Sud-Ouest & Institut de Mathematiques de Bordeaux, Universite de Bordeaux I（波尔多南西INRIA中心与波尔多数学研究所，波尔多第一大学）；Department of Statistics & Applied Probability, National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学统计与应用概率系）；Computer Science and Mathematics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory（橡树岭国家实验室计算机科学与数学部）
