# The Gibbs Sampling

##### Posted on July 22, 2017 0 Comments

The Gibbs sampler is a special MCMC scheme. Its most prominent feature is that the underlying Markov chain is constructed by composing a sequence of conditional distributions along a set of directions.

## Two types of Gibbs sampler

Suppose we can decompose the random variable into $d$ components, $\mathbf x=(x_1,\ldots, x_d)$. In the Gibbs sampler, one randomly or symmetrically chooses a coordinate, say $x_1$, then updates it with new sample $x_1’$ draw from the conditional distribution $\pi(\cdot\mid \mathbf x_{[-1]})$.

### Random-scan Gibbs Sampler

Let $\mathbf x^{(t)}=(x_1^{(t)},\ldots, x_d^{(t)})$ for iteration $t$. Then, at iteration $t+1$, conduct the following steps:

• Randomly select a coordinate $i$ from ${1, \ldots, d}$ according to a given probability vector $(\alpha_1, \ldots, \alpha_d)$
• Draw $x_{i}^{(t+1)}$ from the conditional distribution $\pi(\cdot\mid x_{[-i]}^{(t)})$ and leave the remaining components unchanged

### Systematic-Scan Gibbs Sampler

Let $\mathbf x^{(t)}=(x_1^{(t)},\ldots, x_d^{(t)})$ for iteration $t$. Then, at iteration $t+1$,

• Draw $x_i^{i+1}$ from the conditional distribution

In the both samplers, at every update step, $\pi$ is still invariant. Suppose $\mathbf x^{(t)}\sim \pi$, then $\mathbf x_{[-i]}^{(t)}$ follows its marginal distribution under $\pi$. Thus,

which means that after one conditional update, the new configuration still follows distribution $\pi$.

## References

Liu, Jun S. Monte Carlo strategies in scientific computing. Springer Science & Business Media, 2008.

Published in categories Monte Carlo