arlo (MCMC) methods were developed for situations
in which it is not straightforward to make independent draws
<span class="citation">Metropolis et al. (<a href="#ref-Metropolis:1953" role="doc-biblioref">1953</a>)</span>.</p>
<p>In addition to providing point estimates, Stan’s optimization algorithm
provides a Laplace approximation from which it is easy to draw
random values. Stan’s variational inference algorithm provides
draws from the variational approximation to the posterior. Both
of these outputs