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A classical problem for Markov chains is determining their stationary (or steady-state) distribution. This problem has an equally classical solution based on eigenvectors and linear equation systems. However, this approach does not scale to…
The configuration model is a standard tool for uniformly generating random graphs with a specified degree sequence, and is often used as a null model to evaluate how much of an observed network's structure can be explained by its degree…
Markov chain methods are remarkably successful in computational physics, machine learning, and combinatorial optimization. The cost of such methods often reduces to the mixing time, i.e., the time required to reach the steady state of the…
Statistical inference in evolutionary models with site-dependence is a long-standing challenge in phylogenetics and computational biology. We consider the problem of approximating marginal sequence likelihoods under dependent-site models of…
In this paper we consider the convergence of the conditional entropy to the entropy rate for Markov chains. Convergence of certain statistics of long range dependent processes, such as the sample mean, is slow. It has been shown in Carpio…
In networking applications, one often wishes to obtain estimates about the number of objects at different parts of the network (e.g., the number of cars at an intersection of a road network or the number of packets expected to reach a node…
Let 0<\alpha<1/2. We show that the mixing time of a continuous-time reversible Markov chain on a finite state space is about as large as the largest expected hitting time of a subset of stationary measure at least \alpha of the state space.…
The problem of efficiently sampling from a set of(undirected) graphs with a given degree sequence has many applications. One approach to this problem uses a simple Markov chain, which we call the switch chain, to perform the sampling. The…
We study the problem of generating a sample from the stationary distribution of a Markov chain, given a method to simulate the chain. We give an approximation algorithm for the case of a random walk on a regular graph with n vertices that…
Many problems of practical interest rely on Continuous-time Markov chains~(CTMCs) defined over combinatorial state spaces, rendering the computation of transition probabilities, and hence probabilistic inference, difficult or impossible…
Use each of n exact samples as the initial state for a MCMC sampler run for m steps. We give confidence intervals for accuracy of estimators which are always valid and which, in certain settings, are almost as good as the intervals one…
We survey existing techniques to bound the mixing time of Markov chains. The mixing time is related to a geometric parameter called conductance which is a measure of edge-expansion. Bounds on conductance are typically obtained by a…
A long-standing gap exists between the theoretical analysis of Markov chain Monte Carlo convergence, which is often based on statistical divergences, and the diagnostics used in practice. We introduce the first general convergence…
This paper deals with a complete bipartite matching problem with the objective of finding an optimal matching that maximizes a certain generic predefined utility function on the set of all matchings. After proving the NP-hardness of the…
We prove finite sample complexities for sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) algorithms which require only local mixing times of the associated Markov kernels. Our bounds are particularly useful when the target distribution is multimodal and global…
Markov chains are one of the well-known tools for modeling and analyzing stochastic systems. At the same time, they are used for constructing random walks that can achieve a given stationary distribution. This paper is concerned with…
We consider tilings of a closed region of the Kagome lattice (partition of the plane into regular hexagons and equilateral triangles such that each edge is shared by one triangle and one hexagon). We are interested in the rate of…
By proving a local limit theorem for higher-order transitions, we determine the time required for necklace chains to be close to stationarity. Because necklace chains, built by arranging identical smaller chains around a directed cycle, are…
We study time-changed Markov processes to speed up the convergence of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. The time-changed process is defined by adjusting the speed of time of a base process via a user-chosen, state-dependent…
In this paper we investigate the continuum limits of a class of Markov chains. The investigation of such limits is motivated by the desire to model very large networks. We show that under some conditions, a sequence of Markov chains…