Online Program Home
  My Program

All Times EDT

Abstract Details

Activity Number: 84 - Advances in Spatio-Temporal Statistics with Applications to Environmental Data
Type: Topic-Contributed
Date/Time: Monday, August 9, 2021 : 10:00 AM to 11:50 AM
Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
Abstract #317484
Title: Scalable Forward Sampler Backward Smoother Based on the Vecchia Approximation
Author(s): Marcin Jurek* and Matthias Katzfuss and Pulong Ma
Companies: University of Texas and Texas A&M University and Duke University / SAMSI
Keywords: state-space model; smoothing; filtering; spatio-temporal statistics; data assimilation; remote sensing
Abstract:

We propose an approximation to the Forward Filter Backward (FFBS) sampler commonly used in Bayesian statistics when working with linear Gaussian state-space models. Traditional FFBS has proved immensely useful and fast but it requires inverting covariance matrices that have the size of the latent state vector. The computational burden associated with this operation effectively prohibits its applications in high-dimensional settings. In this paper, we propose an approach based on the hierarchical Vecchia approximation of Gaussian processes, successfully used in spatial statistics. We extend the Vecchia approximation to variables without a spatial reference and use correlation distance instead. This allows us to apply the scalable version of the FFBS to any type of Gaussian data.


Authors who are presenting talks have a * after their name.

Back to the full JSM 2021 program