Diagnosing Suboptimal Cotangent Disintegrations in Hamiltonian Monte Carlo

Abstract

When properly tuned, Hamiltonian Monte Carlo scales to some of the most challenging high-dimensional problems at the frontiers of applied statistics, but when that tuning is suboptimal the performance leaves much to be desired. In this paper I show how suboptimal choices of one critical degree of freedom, the cotangent disintegration, manifest in readily observed diagnostics that facilitate the robust application of the algorithm.