How does Metropolis-Hastings work?
hardAnswer
- MCMC: build a Markov chain whose stationary distribution is the posterior.
- Given current θ, propose θ' ~ .
- Accept with probability .
- Symmetric q simplifies to .
- Only needs the posterior up to a constant → dodges intractable evidence.
- Weaknesses: slow mixing in high dims; sensitive to proposal scale.
Check yourself — multiple choice
- Random
- Propose θ' ~ , accept with ; needs posterior up to constant only
- Same as Gibbs
- Not MCMC
Metropolis-Hastings: propose + accept with α; needs unnormalized posterior only.
#bayesian#mcmc
Practise Statistics Fundamentals
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