Related papers: Carries, shuffling, and symmetric functions

We study a family of maps from $S_n \to S_n$ we call fixed point homing shuffles. These maps generalize a few known problems such as Conway's Topswops, and a card shuffling process studied by Gweneth McKinley. We show that the iterates of…

Markov chains are fundamental models for stochastic dynamics, with applications in a wide range of areas such as population dynamics, queueing systems, reinforcement learning, and Monte Carlo methods. Estimating the transition matrix and…

We study the recurrence/transience phase transition for Markov chains on $\mathbb{R}_+$, $\mathbb{R}$, and $\mathbb{R}^2$ whose increments have heavy tails with exponent in $(1,2)$ and asymptotically zero mean. This is the infinite-variance…

We show how to exploit symmetries of a graph to efficiently compute the fastest mixing Markov chain on the graph (i.e., find the transition probabilities on the edges to minimize the second-largest eigenvalue modulus of the transition…

The second author had previously obtained explicit generating functions for moments of characteristic polynomials of permutation matrices (n points). In this paper, we generalize many aspects of this situation. We introduce random shifts of…

Iteration of randomly chosen quadratic maps defines a Markov process: X_{n+1}=\epsilon_{n+1}X_n(1-X_n), where \epsilon_n are i.i.d. with values in the parameter space [0,4] of quadratic maps F_{\theta}(x)=\theta x(1-x). Its study is of…

A discrete-time Markov chain can be transformed into a new Markov chain by looking at its states along iterations of an almost surely finite stopping time. By the optional stopping theorem, any bounded harmonic function with respect to the…

The extremes of a univariate Markov chain with regulary varying stationary marginal distribution and asymptotically linear behavior are known to exhibit a multiplicative random walk structure called the tail chain. In this paper, we extend…

Squaring and adding $\pm 1$ mod p generates a curiously intractable random walk. A similar process over the finite field $\mathbf{F}_q$ (with $q=2^d$) leads to novel connections between elementary Galois theory and probability.

This paper presents a model of asymmetric bifurcating autoregressive process with random coefficients. We couple this model with a Galton Watson tree to take into account possibly missing observations. We propose least-squares estimators…

We introduce and analyze the $S_k$ shuffle on $N$ cards, a natural generalization of the celebrated random adjacent transposition shuffle. In the $S_k$ shuffle, we choose uniformly at random a block of $k$ consecutive cards, and shuffle…

In this expository article, we highlight the direct connection between card shuffling and the functions known as $P$-partitions that come from algebraic combinatorics. While many (but not all) of the results we discuss are known, we give a…

The perturbed GUE corners ensemble is the joint distribution of eigenvalues of all principal submatrices of a matrix $G+\mathrm{diag}(\mathbf{a})$, where $G$ is the random matrix from the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble (GUE), and…

We consider a card guessing game with complete feedback. An ordered deck of $n$ cards labeled $1$ up to $n$ is riffle-shuffled exactly one time. Given a value $p\in(0{,}1)\setminus\{\frac12\}$, the riffle shuffle is assumed to be…

The random transposition shuffle on repeated cards induces a Markov chain on the quotient space of arrangements with multiplicities, and is equivalent to the many-urn mean-field Bernoulli-Laplace model introduced by Scarabotti. Writing…

The usual random walk on a group (homogeneous both in time and in space) is determined by a probability measure on the group. In a random walk with random transition probabilities this single measure is replaced with a stationary sequence…

Let $Mat_{\mathbb{C}}(K,N)$ be the space of $K\times N$ complex matrices. Let $\mathbf{B}_t$ be Brownian motion on $Mat_{\mathbb{C}}(K,N)$ starting from the zero matrix and $\mathbf{M}\in Mat_{\mathbb{C}}(K,N)$. We prove that, with $K\ge…

Markov chains are a class of probabilistic models that have achieved widespread application in the quantitative sciences. This is in part due to their versatility, but is compounded by the ease with which they can be probed analytically.…

A finite ergodic Markov chain is said to exhibit cutoff if its distance to stationarity remains close to 1 over a certain number of iterations and then abruptly drops to near 0 on a much shorter time scale. Discovered in the context of card…

The matrix of a permutation is a partial case of Markov transition matrices. In the same way, a measure preserving bijection of a space A with finite measure is a partial case of Markov transition operators. A Markov transition operator…