Related papers: Chernoff-Hoeffding Bounds for Markov Chains: Gener…

Using concentration inequalities, we give non-asymptotic confidence intervals for estimates obtained by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations, when using the approximation $\mathbb{E}_{\pi} f\approx (1/(N-t_0))\cdot \sum_{i=t_0+1}^N…

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.…

Random walks on expanders play a crucial role in Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms, derandomization, graph theory, and distributed computing. A desirable property is that they are rapidly mixing, which is equivalent to having a spectral…

We study Markov chains on $\mathbb Z^m$, $m\geq 2$, that behave like a standard symmetric random walk outside of the hyperplane (membrane) $H=\{0\}\times \mathbb Z^{m-1}$. The transition probabilities on the membrane $H$ are periodic and…

Let $(X_t)$ be a discrete time Markov chain on a general state space. It is well-known that if $(X_t)$ is aperiodic and satisfies a drift and minorization condition, then it converges to its stationary distribution $\pi$ at an exponential…

We consider a mechanism for area preserving Hamiltonian systems which leads to the enhanced probability, $P(\lambda, t)$, to find small values of the finite time Lyapunov exponent, $\lambda$. In our investigation of chaotic dynamical…

We consider the first exit time of a nonnegative Harris-recurrent Markov process from the interval $[0,A]$ as $A\to\infty$. We provide an alternative method of proof of asymptotic exponentiality of the first exit time (suitably…

Let $(M,d,\mu)$ be a uniformly discrete metric measure space satisfying space homogeneous volume doubling condition. We consider discrete time Markov chains on $M$ symmetric with respect to $\mu$ and whose one-step transition density is…

Recent research has made significant progress on the problem of bounding log partition functions for exponential family graphical models. Such bounds have associated dual parameters that are often used as heuristic estimates of the marginal…

We consider symmetric Markov chains on $\Bbb Z^d$ where we do {\bf not} assume that the conductance between two points must be zero if the points are far apart. Under a uniform second moment condition on the conductances, we obtain upper…

We study the problem of clustering $T$ trajectories of length $H$, each generated by one of K unknown ergodic Markov chains over a finite state space of size $S$. We derive an instance-dependent, high-probability lower bound on the…

Consider the partial sums {S_t} of a real-valued functional F(Phi(t)) of a Markov chain {Phi(t)} with values in a general state space. Assuming only that the Markov chain is geometrically ergodic and that the functional F is bounded, the…

Let $\pi$ denote the intractable posterior density that results when the likelihood from a multivariate linear regression model with errors from a scale mixture of normals is combined with the standard non-informative prior. There is a…

It is known that state-dependent, multi-step Lyapunov bounds lead to greatly simplified verification theorems for stability for large classes of Markov chain models. This is one component of the "fluid model" approach to stability of…

A one-dimensional confined Nonlinear Random Walk is a tuple of $N$ diffeomorphisms of the unit interval driven by a probabilistic Markov chain. For generic such walks, we obtain a geometric characterization of their ergodic stationary…

We prove that the sum of $t$ boolean-valued random variables sampled by a random walk on a regular expander converges in total variation distance to a discrete normal distribution at a rate of $O(\lambda/t^{1/2-o(1)})$, where $\lambda$ is…

Motivated by robotic surveillance applications, this paper studies the novel problem of maximizing the return time entropy of a Markov chain, subject to a graph topology with travel times and stationary distribution. The return time entropy…

We consider continuous-space, discrete-time Markov chains on $\mathbb{R}^d$, that admit a finite number $N$ of metastable states. Our main motivation for investigating these processes is to analyse random Poincar\'e maps, which describe…

For a reversible and ergodic Markov chain $\{X_n,n\geq0\}$ with invariant distribution $\pi$, we show that a valid confidence interval for $\pi(h)$ can be constructed whenever the asymptotic variance $\sigma^2_P(h)$ is finite and positive.…

We study the mixing time of the Rook's Walk Markov chain on a $d$-dimensional chess board of side length $n\geq 3$, where a rook moves by first selecting an axis uniformly at random and then selecting a new position along that axis…