Paper: A Categorical Account of the Metropolis-Hastings Algorithm (at LICS 2026)

Authors: Rob Cornish Andi Q. Wang

Open access: https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.LICS.2026.32

Abstract

Metropolis-Hastings (MH) is a foundational Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm. In this paper, we ask whether it is possible to formulate and analyse MH in terms of categorical probability, using a recent involutive framework for MH-type procedures as a concrete case study. We show how basic MCMC concepts such as invariance and reversibility can be formulated in Markov categories, and how one part of the MH kernel can be analysed using standard CD categories. To go further, we then study enrichments of CD categories over commutative monoids. This gives an expressive setting for reasoning abstractly about a range of important probabilistic concepts, including substochastic kernels, finite and σ-finite measures, absolute continuity, singular measures, and Lebesgue decompositions. Using these tools, we give synthetic necessary and sufficient conditions for a general MH-type sampler to be reversible with respect to a given target distribution.

BibTeX

  @InProceedings{CornishWang-ACategoricalAccount,
    author = 	 {Rob Cornish and Andi Q. Wang},
    title = 	 {A Categorical Account of the Metropolis-Hastings Algorithm},
    booktitle =  {Proceedings of the Forty-First Annual Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS 2026)},
    year =	 {2026},
    month =	 {July}, 
    pages =      {32:1--32:26},
    location =   {Lisbon, Portugal}, 
    publisher =	 {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik},
    doi =        {10.4230/LIPIcs.LICS.2026.32}
  }