Related papers: Finite-state Markov Chains obey Benford's Law

Linear fractional Galton-Watson branching processes in i.i.d.~random environment are, on the quenched level, intimately connected to random difference equations by the evolution of the random parameters of their linear fractional marginals.…

We elaborate the idea behind Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods in a mathematically coherent, yet simple and understandable way. To this end, we proof a pivotal convergence theorem for finite Markov chains and a minimal version of the…

Benford's law is a statistical inference to predict the frequency of significant digits in naturally occurring numerical databases. In such databases this law predicts a higher occurrence of the digit 1 in the most significant place and…

We describe an exact approach for calculating transition probabilities and waiting times in finite-state discrete-time Markov processes. All the states and the rules for transitions between them must be known in advance. We can then…

This article presents a concise proof of the famous Benford's law when the distribution has a Riemann integrable probability density function and provides a criterion to judge whether a distribution obeys the law. The proof is intuitive and…

Consider a sequence (indexed by n) of Markov chains Z^n in R^d characterized by transition kernels that approximately (in n) depend only on the rescaled state n^{-1} Z^n. Subject to a smoothness condition, such a family can be closely…

Necessary and sufficient conditions for a Markov chain to be ergodic are that the chain is irreducible and aperiodic. This result is manifest in the case of random walks on finite groups by a statement about the support of the driving…

In this paper we study the central limit theorem for additive functionals of stationary Markov chains with general state space by using a new idea involving conditioning with respect to both the past and future of the chain. Practically, we…

We consider a system of $N$ particles interacting through their empirical distribution on a finite state space in continuous time. In the formal limit as $N\to\infty$, the system takes the form of a nonlinear (McKean--Vlasov) Markov chain.…

The Perron-Frobenius theorem plays an important role in many areas of management science and operations research. This paper provides a probabilistic perspective on the theorem, by discussing a proof that exploits a probabilistic…

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…

Let $\{W_t\}_{t=1}^{\infty}$ be a finite state stationary Markov chain, and suppose that $f$ is a real-valued function on the state space. If $f$ is bounded, then Gillman's expander Chernoff bound (1993) provides concentration estimates for…

We consider evaluation of proper posterior distributions obtained from improper prior distributions. Our context is estimating a bounded function $\phi$ of a parameter when the loss is quadratic. If the posterior mean of $\phi$ is…

We consider moments of the return times (or first hitting times) in a discrete time discrete space Markov chain. It is classical that the finiteness of the first moment of a return time of one state implies the finiteness of the first…

Computational procedures for the stationary probability distribution, the group inverse of the Markovian kernel and the mean first passage times of an irreducible Markov chain, are developed using perturbations. The derivation of these…

It is well known that the distributions of hitting times in Markov chains are quite irregular, unless the limit as time tends to infinity is considered. We show that nevertheless for a typical finite irreducible Markov chain and for…

We consider a family of measure preserving transformations, which act on a common probability space and are chosen at random by a stationary ergodic Markov chain. This setting defines an instance of a random dynamical system (RDS), which…

We investigate absorption, i.e., almost sure convergence to an absorbing state, in time-varying (non-homogeneous) discrete-time Markov chains with finite state space. We consider systems that can switch among a finite set of transition…

We extend Hoeffding's lemma to general-state-space and not necessarily reversible Markov chains. Let $\{X_i\}_{i \ge 1}$ be a stationary Markov chain with invariant measure $\pi$ and absolute spectral gap $1-\lambda$, where $\lambda$ is…

The linear response of a dynamical system refers to changes to properties of the system when small external perturbations are applied. We consider the little-studied question of selecting an optimal perturbation so as to (i) maximise the…