Use of a Quantum Computer to do Importance and Metropolis-Hastings Sampling of a Classical Bayesian Network

Abstract

Importance sampling and Metropolis-Hastings sampling (of which Gibbs sampling is a special case) are two methods commonly used to sample multi-variate probability distributions (that is, Bayesian networks). Heretofore, the sampling of Bayesian networks has been done on a conventional "classical computer". In this paper, we propose methods for doing importance sampling and Metropolis-Hastings sampling of a classical Bayesian network on a quantum computer.