Rendani Mbuvha

This book offers a comprehensive discussion of the Bayesian inference framework and demonstrates why this probabilistic approach is ideal for tackling the various modelling problems within quantitative finance. It demonstrates how advanced Bayesian machine learning techniques can be applied within financial engineering, investment portfolio management, insurance, municipal finance management as well as banking. The book covers a broad range of modelling approaches, including Bayesian neural networks, Gaussian processes and Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. It also discusses the utility of Bayesian inference in quantitative finance and discusses future research goals in the applications of Bayesian machine learning in quantitative finance. Chapters are rooted in the theory of quantitative finance and machine learning while also outlining a range of practical considerations for implementing Bayesian techniques into real-world quantitative finance problems. This book is ideal for graduate researchers and practitioners at the intersection of machine learning and quantitative finance, as well as those working in computational statistics and computer science more broadly.

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo Methods in Machine Learning introduces methods for optimal tuning of HMC parameters, along with an introduction of Shadow and Non-canonical HMC methods with improvements and speedup. Lastly, the authors address the critical issues of variance reduction for parameter estimates of numerous HMC based samplers. The book offers a comprehensive introduction to Hamiltonian Monte Carlo methods and provides a cutting-edge exposition of the current pathologies of HMC-based methods in both tuning, scaling and sampling complex real-world posteriors. These are mainly in the scaling of inference (e.g., Deep Neural Networks), tuning of performance-sensitive sampling parameters and high sample autocorrelation. Other sections provide numerous solutions to potential pitfalls, presenting advanced HMC methods with applications in renewable energy, finance and image classification for biomedical applications. Readers will get acquainted with both HMC sampling theory and algorithm implementation.