Paper detail

Computational Aspects of Optional Pólya Tree

Optional Pólya Tree (OPT) is a flexible non-parametric Bayesian model for density estimation. Despite its merits, the computation for OPT inference is challenging. In this paper we present time complexity analysis for OPT inference and propose two algorithmic improvements. The first improvement, named Limited-Lookahead Optional Pólya Tree (LL-OPT), aims at greatly accelerate the computation for OPT inference. The second improvement modifies the output of OPT or LL-OPT and produces a continuous piecewise linear density estimate. We demonstrate the performance of these two improvements using simulations.