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International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics

Quasi-Monte Carlo methods for simulation

Pierre L’Ecuyer

Published May 6, 2004• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) methods are numerical techniques for estimating large-dimensional integrals, usually over the unit hypercube. They can be applied, at least in principle, to any simulation whose aim is to estimate a mathematical expectation. This covers a very wide range of applications. In this paper, we review some of the key ideas of quasi-Monte Carlo methods from a broad perspective, with emphasis on some recent results. We visit lattice rules in different types of spaces and make the connections between these rules and digital nets, thus covering the two most widely used QMC methods.

DOI
10.1109/wsc.2003.1261411

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Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) methods are numerical techniques for estimating large-dimensional integrals, usually over the unit hypercube. They can be applied, at least in principle, to any simulation whose aim is to estimate a mathematical expectation. This covers a very wide range of applications. In this paper, we review some of the key ideas of quasi-Monte Carlo methods from a broad perspective, with emphasis on some recent results. We visit lattice rules in different types of spaces and make the connections between these rules and digital nets, thus covering the two most widely used QMC methods.
This paper is a contemporary review of QMC (‘quasi-Monte Carlo’) methods, that is, equal-weight rules for the approximate evaluation of high-dimensional integrals over the unit cube [0,1] s , where s may be large, or even infinite. After a general introduction, the paper surveys recent developments in lattice methods, digital nets, and related themes. Among those recent developments are methods of construction of both lattices and digital nets, to yield QMC rules that have a prescribed rate of convergence for sufficiently smooth functions, and ideally also guaranteed slow growth (or no growth) of the worst-case error as s increases. A crucial role is played by parameters called ‘weights’, since a careful use of the weight parameters is needed to ensure that the worst-case errors in an appropriately weighted function space are bounded, or grow only slowly, as the dimension s increases. Important tools for the analysis are weighted function spaces, reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces, and discrepancy, all of which are discussed with an appropriate level of detail.
This paper is a contemporary review of quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) methods, that is, equal-weight rules for the approximate evaluation of high-dimensional integrals over the unit cube [0,1]s[0,1]^s[0,1]s. It first introduces the by-now standard setting of weighted Hilbert spaces of functions with square-integrable mixed first derivatives, and then indicates alternative settings, such as non-Hilbert spaces, that can sometimes be more suitable. Original contributions include the extension of the fast component-by-component (CBC) construction of lattice rules that achieve the optimal convergence order (a rate of almost 1/N1/N1/N, where NNN is the number of points, independently of dimension) to so-called “product and order dependent” (POD) weights, as seen in some recent applications. Although the paper has a strong focus on lattice rules, the function space settings are applicable to all QMC methods. Furthermore, the error analysis and construction of lattice rules can be adapted to polynomial lattice rules from the family of digital nets. doi:10.1017/S1446181112000077
Abstract This paper is a contemporary review of quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) methods, that is, equal-weight rules for the approximate evaluation of high-dimensional integrals over the unit cube [0,1] s . It first introduces the by-now standard setting of weighted Hilbert spaces of functions with square-integrable mixed first derivatives, and then indicates alternative settings, such as non-Hilbert spaces, that can sometimes be more suitable. Original contributions include the extension of the fast component-by-component (CBC) construction of lattice rules that achieve the optimal convergence order (a rate of almost 1/ N , where N is the number of points, independently of dimension) to so-called “product and order dependent” (POD) weights, as seen in some recent applications. Although the paper has a strong focus on lattice rules, the function space settings are applicable to all QMC methods. Furthermore, the error analysis and construction of lattice rules can be adapted to polynomial lattice rules from the family of digital nets.
Monte Carlo (MQ) method is a powerful tool to approximate high dimensional integrals. The disadvantage of ordinary MQ is the slow convergence rate by cause of the essential randomness of this method. Computations of this convergence can lead to pure time consuming. Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) method yields considerably better results since this method is a deterministic alternative which uses Low-Discrepancy sequences instead of random samples . There are a multiplicity of big open problems in QMC-methods, problems partly arising from applications and partly arising from theory. QMC are developed to integrate over unite cube, where it has much more accuracy than MC for integrands of bounded variation. Integration over more general spaces such as triangles, disks and Cartesian products of such spaces is more challenging for QMC. Nevertheless in real-world applications various problems are defined over such spaces. The aim of this thesis is to provide a survey of a solution of such problems of numerical integration defined over non-cubical spaces. We present QMC and randomised QMC (RQMC) constructions in the triangle with a vanishing discrepancy based on the recent work of Basu 2016. The QMC construction is a version of the Van der Corput-Halton sequences specially made to the unit triangle. The attraction of scrambled net is replication based error estimation for QMC with slightly the same accuracy as QMC, and for smooth enough integrands.
We survey basic ideas and results on randomized quasi-Monte Carlo (RQMC) methods, discuss their practical aspects, and give numerical illustrations. RQMC can improve accuracy compared with standard Monte Carlo (MC) when estimating an integral interpreted as a mathematical expectation. RQMC estimators are unbiased and their variance converges at a faster rate (under certain conditions) than MC estimators, as a function of the sample size. Variants of RQMC also work for the simulation of Markov chains, for function approximation and optimization, for solving partial differential equations, etc. In this introductory survey, we look at how RQMC point sets and sequences are constructed, how we measure their uniformity, why they can work for high-dimensional integrals, and how can they work when simulating Markov chains over a large number of steps.