Related papers: The switch Markov chain for sampling irregular gra…
With sufficient time, double edge-swap Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are able to sample uniformly at random from many different and important graph spaces. For instance, for a fixed degree sequence, MCMC methods can sample any…
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…
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…
A sequence $D = \{d_1,...d_n\}$ is a feasible degree sequence if there is a graph on $\{1,...,n\}$ such that $i$ has degree $d_i$. For such a sequence, $G(D)$ is a graph chosen uniformly at random from those with the given degree sequence.…
Fast distributed algorithms that output a feasible solution for constraint satisfaction problems, such as maximal independent sets, have been heavily studied. There has been much less research on distributed sampling problems, where one…
We introduce a new random graph model motivated by biological questions relating to speciation. This random graph is defined as the stationary distribution of a Markov chain on the space of graphs on $\{1, \ldots, n\}$. The dynamics of this…
We design an efficient sampling algorithm to generate samples from the hardcore model on random regular bipartite graphs as long as $\lambda \lesssim \frac{1}{\sqrt{\Delta}}$, where $\Delta$ is the degree. Combined with recent work of…
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.…
We study a number of graph exploration problems in the following natural scenario: an algorithm starts exploring an undirected graph from some seed node; the algorithm, for an arbitrary node $v$ that it is aware of, can ask an oracle to…
The Markov chain approximation of a one-dimensional symmetric diffusion is investigated in this paper. Given an irreducible reflecting diffusion on a closed interval with scale function $s$ and speed measure $m$, the approximating Markov…
We consider the problem of estimating the measure of subsets in very large networks. A prime tool for this purpose is the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm. This algorithm, while extremely useful in many cases, still often suffers…
Solving fastest mixing Markov chain problem (i.e. finding transition probabilities on the edges to minimize the second largest eigenvalue modulus of the transition probability matrix) over networks with different topologies is one of the…
We study a variation of vanilla stochastic gradient descent where the optimizer only has access to a Markovian sampling scheme. These schemes encompass applications that range from decentralized optimization with a random walker (token…
This paper introduces a concept of approximate spectral gap to analyze the mixing time of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms for which the usual spectral gap is degenerate or almost degenerate. We use the idea to analyze a class of…
The Markov Chain Monte Carlo method is at the heart of efficient approximation schemes for a wide range of problems in combinatorial enumeration and statistical physics. It is therefore very natural and important to determine whether…
We study the following problem: given an integer $k \ge 3$ and a simple graph $G$, sample a connected induced $k$-node subgraph of $G$ uniformly at random. This is a fundamental graph mining primitive with applications in social network…
We show that the convergence of finite state space Markov chains to stationarity can often be considerably speeded up by alternating every step of the chain with a deterministic move. Under fairly general conditions, we show that not only…
Markov chains are a class of probabilistic models that have achieved widespread application in the quantitative sciences. This is in part due to their versatility, but is compounded by the ease with which they can be probed analytically.…
Motivated by applications arising in networked systems, this work examines controlled regime-switching systems that stem from a mean-variance formulation. A main point is that the switching process is a hidden Markov chain. An additional…
Markov chains are an important tool for modelling and evaluating systems in computer science, economics, biology and numerous other fields. Thus, approximating Markov chains is a useful tool for decreasing the computational effort needed…