We introduce a methodology for performing approximate computations in very complex probabilistic systems (e.g. huge pedigrees). Our approach, called blocking Gibbs, combines exact local computations with Gibbs sampling in a way that complements the strengths of both. The methodology is illustrated on a real-world problem involving a heavily inbred pedigree containing 20;000 individuals. We pres...

We introduce a methodology for performing approximate computations in very complex probabilistic systems (e.g. huge pedigrees). Our approach, called blocking Gibbs, combines exact local computations with Gibbs sampling in a way that complements the strengths of both. The methodology is illustrated on a real-world problem involving a heavily inbred pedigree containing 20;000 individuals. We pres...

Alternating Gibbs sampling is a modification of classical Gibbs sampling where several variables are simultaneously sampled from their joint conditional distribution. In this work, we investigate the mixing rate of alternating Gibbs sampling with a particular emphasis on Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs) and variants.

Researchers have recently introduced a promising new class of Distributed Constraint Optimization Problem (DCOP) algorithms that is based on sampling. This paradigm is very amenable to parallelization since sampling algorithms require a lot of samples to ensure convergence, and the sampling process can be designed to be executed in parallel. This paper presents GPU-based D-Gibbs (GD-Gibbs), whi...