On 15.02.2017 11:36, P-M wrote:
Tiago Peixoto wrote
Note that, as the documentation warns, parallel=True triggers an approximated MCMC which will _not_ lead to the correct posterior distribution.
I know, the documentation states that assymptotic exactness cannot be guaranteed if using parallel=True. What I wasn't quite clear on is how severe the consequences of this are. Is this a case of potentially introducing a small error or is this a case of "we have no idea what the answer will say"? If the latter is the case what would a sensible use case be for switching parallel to True? (I am trying to use it to calculate missing edges which even with parallel takes very long for the network so I fear without it it would just not be feasible.)
The posterior will be wrong, but it is not possible to say how wrong in general. This is useful only when, e.g. using it is a heuristic to find the minimum description length, since the shape of the posterior does not matter, only its maximum. -- Tiago de Paula Peixoto <tiago@skewed.de>