Convergence analysis of multifidelity Monte Carlo estimation

Abstract The multifidelity Monte Carlo method provides a general framework for combining cheap low-fidelity approximations of an expensive high-fidelity model to accelerate the Monte Carlo estimation of statistics of the high-fidelity model output. In this work, we investigate the pro...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Peherstorfer, Benjamin, Gunzburger, Max, Willcox, Karen
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2021
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/131836
Description
Summary:Abstract The multifidelity Monte Carlo method provides a general framework for combining cheap low-fidelity approximations of an expensive high-fidelity model to accelerate the Monte Carlo estimation of statistics of the high-fidelity model output. In this work, we investigate the properties of multifidelity Monte Carlo estimation in the setting where a hierarchy of approximations can be constructed with known error and cost bounds. Our main result is a convergence analysis of multifidelity Monte Carlo estimation, for which we prove a bound on the costs of the multifidelity Monte Carlo estimator under assumptions on the error and cost bounds of the low-fidelity approximations. The assumptions that we make are typical in the setting of similar Monte Carlo techniques. Numerical experiments illustrate the derived bounds.