English

Importance sampling for weighted binary random matrices with specified margins

Computation 2013-01-18 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

A sequential importance sampling algorithm is developed for the distribution that results when a matrix of independent, but not identically distributed, Bernoulli random variables is conditioned on a given sequence of row and column sums. This conditional distribution arises in a variety of applications and includes as a special case the uniform distribution over zero-one tables with specified margins. The algorithm uses dynamic programming to combine hard margin constraints, combinatorial approximations, and additional non-uniform weighting in a principled way to give state-of-the-art results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1301.3928,
  title  = {Importance sampling for weighted binary random matrices with specified margins},
  author = {Matthew T. Harrison and Jeffrey W. Miller},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1301.3928},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

39 pages (13 pages main text, 26 pages supplementary material); supersedes arXiv:0906.1004

R2 v1 2026-06-21T23:10:52.825Z