scholarly journals An approximate likelihood perspective on ABC methods

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (0) ◽  
pp. 66-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Karabatsos ◽  
Fabrizio Leisen
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (134) ◽  
pp. 20170340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aidan C. Daly ◽  
Jonathan Cooper ◽  
David J. Gavaghan ◽  
Chris Holmes

Bayesian methods are advantageous for biological modelling studies due to their ability to quantify and characterize posterior variability in model parameters. When Bayesian methods cannot be applied, due either to non-determinism in the model or limitations on system observability, approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) methods can be used to similar effect, despite producing inflated estimates of the true posterior variance. Owing to generally differing application domains, there are few studies comparing Bayesian and ABC methods, and thus there is little understanding of the properties and magnitude of this uncertainty inflation. To address this problem, we present two popular strategies for ABC sampling that we have adapted to perform exact Bayesian inference, and compare them on several model problems. We find that one sampler was impractical for exact inference due to its sensitivity to a key normalizing constant, and additionally highlight sensitivities of both samplers to various algorithmic parameters and model conditions. We conclude with a study of the O'Hara–Rudy cardiac action potential model to quantify the uncertainty amplification resulting from employing ABC using a set of clinically relevant biomarkers. We hope that this work serves to guide the implementation and comparative assessment of Bayesian and ABC sampling techniques in biological models.


2021 ◽  
pp. gr.273631.120
Author(s):  
Xinhao Liu ◽  
Huw A Ogilvie ◽  
Luay Nakhleh

Coalescent methods are proven and powerful tools for population genetics, phylogenetics, epidemiology, and other fields. A promising avenue for the analysis of large genomic alignments, which are increasingly common, are coalescent hidden Markov model (coalHMM) methods, but these methods have lacked general usability and flexibility. We introduce a novel method for automatically learning a coalHMM and inferring the posterior distributions of evolutionary parameters using black-box variational inference, with the transition rates between local genealogies derived empirically by simulation. This derivation enables our method to work directly with three or four taxa and through a divide-and-conquer approach with more taxa. Using a simulated data set resembling a human-chimp-gorilla scenario, we show that our method has comparable or better accuracy to previous coalHMM methods. Both species divergence times and population sizes were accurately inferred. The method also infers local genealogies and we report on their accuracy. Furthermore, we discuss a potential direction for scaling the method to larger data sets through a divide-and-conquer approach. This accuracy means our method is useful now, and by deriving transition rates by simulation it is flexible enough to enable future implementations of all kinds of population models.


2009 ◽  
Vol 347 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 205-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aude Grelaud ◽  
Christian P. Robert ◽  
Jean-Michel Marin

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