Biostatistics
A proposal distribution is a probability distribution used in Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to generate candidate samples from a target distribution. It plays a critical role in determining how new samples are proposed during the sampling process, influencing the efficiency and convergence of the MCMC algorithm. A good proposal distribution closely approximates the target distribution, allowing for faster exploration of the sample space.
congrats on reading the definition of proposal distribution. now let's actually learn it.