Bias from returning a rejected proposal after a rejection-sampling cap
ID: bias-from-returning-a-rejected-proposal-after-a-rejection-sampling-cap
Consider independent rejection sampling trials with proposal density , accepted-value density , acceptance probability and rejection probability . Splitting the proposal law by its accept/reject outcome gives , where is the rejected-proposal distribution.
If an algorithm permits trials, returns the first accepted value when one occurs, and otherwise returns the final rejected proposal, its output density is the displayed mixture. The event of failures has probability and gives the conditional law ; every successful stopping trial gives law . Hence the forced return introduces bias unless , and its contribution decays geometrically with the cap. Conditional on success before any specified trial, the output still has law , since accepted value and successful-trial index are independent.
New to topics? Read the docs here!