Related papers: Chernoff-Hoeffding Bounds for Markov Chains: Gener…
This paper is a survey of various proofs of the so called {\em fundamental theorem of Markov chains}: every ergodic Markov chain has a unique positive stationary distribution and the chain attains this distribution in the limit independent…
We consider the random reversible Markov kernel K obtained by assigning i.i.d. nonnegative weights to the edges of the complete graph over n vertices and normalizing by the corresponding row sum. The weights are assumed to be in the domain…
In a Markov chain started at a state $x$, the hitting time $\tau(y)$ is the first time that the chain reaches another state $y$. We study the probability $\mathbf{P}_x(\tau(y) = t)$ that the first visit to $y$ occurs precisely at a given…
The Chernoff bound is an important inequality relation in probability theory. The original version of the Chernoff bound is to give an exponential decreasing bound on the tail distribution of sums of independent random variables. Recent…
The spectral gap $\gamma$ of an ergodic and reversible Markov chain is an important parameter measuring the asymptotic rate of convergence. In applications, the transition matrix $P$ may be unknown, yet one sample of the chain up to a fixed…
The random-cluster model is a unifying framework for studying random graphs, spin systems and electrical networks that plays a fundamental role in designing efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling algorithms for the classical…
Given a labelled tournament on $[n]$, \emph{inverting} a vertex subset $X$ means reversing every edge with both endpoints in $X$. Alon, Powierski, Savery, Scott, and Wilmer~\cite{AlonPowierskiSaveryScottWilmer2024} asked for the mixing time…
Chernoff's bound binds a tail probability (ie. $Pr(X \ge a)$, where $a \ge EX$). Assuming that the distribution of $X$ is $Q$, the logarithm of the bound is known to be equal to the value of relative entropy (or minus Kullback-Leibler…
The aim of this note is to present an elementary proof of a variation of Harris' ergodic theorem of Markov chains. This theorem, dating back to the fifties essentially states that a Markov chain is uniquely ergodic if it admits a ``small''…
We consider a Markov chain on $\mathbb{R}^d$ with invariant measure $\mu$. We are interested in the rate of convergence of the empirical measures towards the invariant measure with respect to various dual distances, including in particular…
The distribution of the "mixing time" or the "time to stationarity" in a discrete time irreducible Markov chain, starting in state i, can be defined as the number of trials to reach a state sampled from the stationary distribution of the…
Approximating the stationary probability of a state in a Markov chain through Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques is, in general, inefficient. Standard random walk approaches require $\tilde{O}(\tau/\pi(v))$ operations to approximate the…
For a discrete-time Markov chain $\{X(t)\}$ evolving on $\Re^\ell$ with transition kernel $P$, natural, general conditions are developed under which the following are established: 1. The transition kernel $P$ has a purely discrete spectrum,…
We address the problem of upper bounding the mean square error of MCMC estimators. Our analysis is nonasymptotic. We first establish a general result valid for essentially all ergodic Markov chains encountered in Bayesian computation and a…
We prove explicit, i.e. non-asymptotic, error bounds for Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. The problem is to compute the expectation of a function f with respect to a measure {\pi}. Different convergence properties of Markov chains imply…
Consider a Markov chain $(X_i)_{i\ge0}$ with invariant measure $\mu$ that admits the representation $X_{i+1}=\Phi(X_i,U_i)$, where $(U_i)_{i\ge0}$ are i.i.d. random variables and $\Phi$ is a measurable map. We introduce a tangent-decoupled…
For a Markov semigroup $P_t$ with invariant probability measure $\mu$, a constant $\ll>0$ is called a lower bound of the ultra-exponential convergence rate of $P_t$ to $\mu$, if there exists a constant $C\in (0,\infty)$ such that $$…
We establish Chernoff-type bounds for the largest eigenvalue of sums of Hermitian random matrices generated by a time-inhomogeneous Markov chain. Our primary regime assumes a compact state space and contractivity of each Markov kernel in…
We present simple randomized and exchangeable improvements of Markov's inequality, as well as Chebyshev's inequality and Chernoff bounds. Our variants are never worse and typically strictly more powerful than the original inequalities. The…
The first-passage time (FPT) is the time it takes a system variable to cross a given boundary for the first time. In the context of Markov networks, the FPT is the time a random walker takes to reach a particular node (target) by hopping…