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Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are often used for approximate inference inside learning, but their slow mixing can be difficult to diagnose and the approximations can seriously degrade learning. To alleviate these issues, we…
In a series of recent works, Boyd, Diaconis, and their co-authors have introduced a semidefinite programming approach for computing the fastest mixing Markov chain on a graph of allowed transitions, given a target stationary distribution.…
We give a method of generating strongly polynomial sequences of graphs, i.e., sequences $(H_{\mathbf{k}})$ indexed by a multivariate parameter $\mathbf{k}=(k_1,\ldots, k_h)$ such that, for each fixed graph $G$, there is a multivariate…
We give a new method for analysing the mixing time of a Markov chain using path coupling with stopping times. We apply this approach to two hypergraph problems. We show that the Glauber dynamics for independent sets in a hypergraph mixes…
We present an improved coupling technique for analyzing the mixing time of Markov chains. Using our technique, we simplify and extend previous results for sampling colorings and independent sets. Our approach uses properties of the…
We study algorithms to analyze a particular class of Markov population processes that is often used in epidemiology. More specifically, Markov binomial chains are the model that arises from stochastic time-discretizations of classical…
The abelian sandpile model defines a Markov chain whose states are integer-valued functions on the vertices of a simple connected graph $G$. By viewing this chain as a (nonreversible) random walk on an abelian group, we give a formula for…
We consider the problem of sampling a bipartite graph with given vertex degrees where a set $F$ of edges and non-edges which need to be contained is predefined. Our general result shows that the repeated swap of edges and non-edges in…
Consider the interchange process on a connected graph $G=(V,E)$ on $n$ vertices. I.e.\ shuffle a deck of cards by first placing one card at each vertex of $G$ in a fixed order and then at each tick of the clock, picking an edge uniformly at…
Mixing of finite time-homogeneous Markov chains is well understood nowadays, with a rich set of techniques to estimate their mixing time. In this paper, we study the mixing time of random walks in dynamic random environments. To that end,…
We study the mixing time of the symmetric beta-binomial splitting process on finite weighted connected graphs $G=(V,E,\{r_e\}_{e\in E})$ with vertex set $V$, edge set $E$ and positive edge-weights $r_e>0$ for $e\in E$. This is an…
This monograph is an exposition on an exciting new technique known as spectral independence, which has been instrumental in analyzing the convergence rate of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. For a high-dimensional distribution…
Sampling from Gibbs distribution is a central problem in computer science as well as in statistical physics. In this work we focus on the k-colouring model} and the hard-core model with fugacity \lambda when the underlying graph is an…
The graph isomorphism (GI) problem, which asks whether two graphs are structurally identical, occupies a unique position in computational complexity -- it is neither known to be solvable in polynomial time, nor proven to be NP-complete. We…
We consider the problem of uniformly generating a spanning tree, of a connected undirected graph. This process is useful to compute statistics, namely for phylogenetic trees. We describe a Markov chain for producing these trees. For cycle…
Lifted Markov chains are Markov chains on graphs with added local "memory" and can be used to mix towards a target distribution faster than their memoryless counterparts. Upper and lower bounds on the achievable performance have been…
We study a colored generalization of the famous simple-switch Markov chain for sampling the set of graphs with a fixed degree sequence. Here we consider the space of graphs with colored vertices, in which we fix the degree sequence and…
Let $\gS=(V,E)$ be a finite, $d$-regular bipartite graph. For any $\lambda>0$ let $\pi_\lambda$ be the probability measure on the independent sets of $\gS$ in which the set $I$ is chosen with probability proportional to $\lambda^{|I|}$…
Chebyshev interpolation polynomials exhibit the exponential approximation property to analytic functions on a cube. Based on the Chebyshev interpolation polynomial approximation, we propose iterative polynomial approximation algorithms to…
This paper presents a novel theoretical Monte Carlo Markov chain procedure in the framework of graphs. It specifically deals with the construction of a Markov chain whose empirical distribution converges to a given reference one. The Markov…