A current challenge for many Bayesian analyses is determining when to terminate high-dimensional Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations. To this end, we propose using an automated sequential stopping procedure that terminates the simulation when the co
mputational uncertainty is small relative to the posterior uncertainty. Such a stopping rule has previously been shown to work well in settings with posteriors of moderate dimension. In this paper, we illustrate its utility in high-dimensional simulations while overcoming some current computational issues. Further, we investigate the relationship between the stopping rule and effective sample size. As examples, we consider two complex Bayesian analyses on spatially and temporally correlated datasets. The first involves a dynamic space-time model on weather station data and the second a spatial variable selection model on fMRI brain imaging data. Our results show the sequential stopping rule is easy to implement, provides uncertainty estimates, and performs well in high-dimensional settings.
Calculating a Monte Carlo standard error (MCSE) is an important step in the statistical analysis of the simulation output obtained from a Markov chain Monte Carlo experiment. An MCSE is usually based on an estimate of the variance of the asymptotic n
ormal distribution. We consider spectral and batch means methods for estimating this variance. In particular, we establish conditions which guarantee that these estimators are strongly consistent as the simulation effort increases. In addition, for the batch means and overlapping batch means methods we establish conditions ensuring consistency in the mean-square sense which in turn allows us to calculate the optimal batch size up to a constant of proportionality. Finally, we examine the empirical finite-sample properties of spectral variance and batch means estimators and provide recommendations for practitioners.
