Posterior contraction rates of computational methods for Bayesian data assimilation

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze posterior consistency of a Bayesian data assimilation problem under discretization. We prove convergence rates for the discrete posterior to ground truth solution under both conforming discretization and finite element discretization (usually non-conforming). The analysis is based on the coupling of asymptotics between the number of samples and the dimension of discrete spaces. In the finite element discretization, tailor-made discrete priors, instead of the discretization of continuous priors, are used to generate an optimal convergence rate.