The underlying engine PolyChord is a “hands off” Bayesian optimizer and evidence calculator, representing the cutting-edge of nested sampling technology. PolyChord is widely used in astrophysics and cosmology, providing more accurate and reliable answers in comparison with all existing tools.
PolyChord is uniquely specialised for navigating high-dimensional multi-modal posteriors with complicated shapes and degeneracies, which typically cause industry-standard optimisers to founder. Moreover, PolyChord’s evidence calculation explicitly quantifies how good a model is relative to other architectures.
For academic papers detailing the original algorithm (PolyChord Lite) please see:
- PolyChord: nested sampling for cosmology – arXiv:1502.01856, MNRAS 450(1) L61-L65,
- PolyChord: next-generation nested sampling – arXiv:1506.00171, MNRAS 453(4) 4384-4398
Applying PolyChord Lite to neural network training: