Inference Methods

In its release version Colibri supports three types of inference methods:

Analytic fit: the PDF model posteriors mean and covariance are determined as analytic solution to a linear regression problem.
Bayesian inference: the posterior distribution of the PDF model parameters is sampled using a Bayesian sampling method.
Monte Carlo replica method: the posterior distribution of the PDF model parameters is approximated with the Monte Carlo Replica Method [CMMM24].

In the following sections we will discuss the three inference methods in detail.

Analytic fits

The analytic fit method is only applicable when both the PDF model is linear in the parameters, and the forward modeling is linear in the PDF. This means that the method cannot incorporate non-linear constraints such as positivity or integrability, making it unsuitable for fully realistic PDF fits.

Note

An analytic fit can still be useful to fit linear DIS data without constraints, and then use the resulting Gaussian posterior as a prior for a subsequent realistic fit on an uncorrelated dataset. (See this section for details on bayesian prior distributions.) This two-step approach can reduce computational load when running bayesian fits.

To illustrate the analytical method, let us assume a likelihood of the kind

(1)\[p(D \mid \theta) = \frac{1}{(2\pi)^{N/2}\,\lvert\Sigma\rvert^{1/2}} \exp\!\Bigl(-\tfrac12\,(D - f(\theta))^T\,\Sigma^{-1}\,(D - f(\theta))\Bigr)\,,\]

where \(D\) are the central values of the measured data and \(\Sigma\) the covariance matrix. If \(f(\theta)\) is a linear model in \(\theta\),

(2)\[f(\theta) = W\,\theta\,,\]

then the likelihood is Gaussian in the model parameters \(\theta\) and can be rewritten as

(3)\[\begin{split}\begin{aligned} p(D \mid \theta) &= \frac{(2\pi)^{N_{\rm params}/2}\,\bigl\lvert(W^T\Sigma^{-1}W)^{-1}\bigr\rvert^{1/2}} {(2\pi)^{N_{\rm dat}/2}\,\lvert\Sigma\rvert^{1/2}} \,\exp\!\Bigl(-\tfrac12\,(D - \hat{D})^T\,\Sigma^{-1}\,(D - \hat{D})\Bigr)\\ &\quad\times \frac{\exp\!\Bigl(-\tfrac12\, (\theta - \hat{\theta})^T\,W^T\Sigma^{-1}W\,(\theta - \hat{\theta}) \Bigr)} {(2\pi)^{N_{\rm params}/2}\,\bigl\lvert(W^T\Sigma^{-1}W)^{-1}\bigr\rvert^{1/2}}\\ &= (2\pi)^{N_{\rm params}/2}\,\bigl\lvert(W^T\Sigma^{-1}W)^{-1}\bigr\rvert^{1/2} \;p(D \mid \hat{\theta})\,p(\hat{\theta}\mid\theta)\,, \end{aligned}\end{split}\]

where

(4)\[\hat{\theta} = (W^T\,\Sigma^{-1}\,W)^{-1}\,W^T\,\Sigma^{-1}\,D, \quad \hat{D} = W\,\hat{\theta},\]

are the maximum likelihood estimate of the parameters and the corresponding model prediction, respectively. Moreover, \(p(D | \hat{\theta})\) is the likelihood of the data evaluated at the maximum likelihood estimate, and

(5)\[p(\hat{\theta}\mid\theta) = \frac{\exp\!\Bigl(-\tfrac12\, (\theta - \hat{\theta})^T\,W^T\Sigma^{-1}W\,(\theta - \hat{\theta}) \Bigr)} {(2\pi)^{N_{\rm params}/2}\,\bigl\lvert(W^T\Sigma^{-1}W)^{-1}\bigr\rvert^{1/2}}.\]

If we assume a uniform prior for the parameters \(\theta\), i.e.

(6)\[\begin{split}p(\theta_i) = \begin{cases} \tfrac{1}{b_i - a_i}, & \text{if } \theta_i \in [a_i, b_i],\\ 0, & \text{otherwise}, \end{cases}\end{split}\]

then the posterior distribution becomes

(7)\[\begin{split}\begin{aligned} p(\theta \mid D) &\propto p(D \mid \theta)\,p(\theta)\\ &\propto p(D \mid \theta) \prod_{i=1}^{N_{\rm params}} \frac{\Theta(\theta_i - a_i)\,\Theta(b_i - \theta_i)}{b_i - a_i}\,. \end{aligned}\end{split}\]

Bayesian inference

In the most general setting, that is for any type of PDF and forward model, it is recommended to use the Bayesian inference method which is based on a nested sampling implementation given by the UltraNest package.

A tutorial on how to perform a Bayesian fit using nested sampling can be found in the (TODOL: add link to the tutorial).

Gradient based methods

Colibri supports the use of gradient-based methods, trough the jax and optax libraries, for the inference of the PDF model parameters.

A tutorial can be found here (TODO in tutorials).

A gradient-based method used to also perform uncertainty quantification and that can be found in colibri is the Monte Carlo replica method. This method consists in determining a set of fit outcomes to approximate the posterior probability distribution of the PDF model given a set of experimental input data. The input data are in turn represented as a MC sample of \(N_{\rm rep}\) pseudodata replicas whose distribution (typically a multivariate normal) reproduces the covariance matrix of the experimental data. The fit outcomes are determined by minimising conditionally on a validation set the likelihood function defined in Likelihood function.

Note

As shown in the study presented in Ref. CMMM24, the MC replica method is equivalent to Bayesian inference only for linear PDF and forward models. In the presence of non-linearities the method shows a possible bias and underestimation of the uncertainties. For this reason, we don’t recommend using the MC replica method for non-linear PDF and forward models.