Related papers: Mixing Time Estimation in Reversible Markov Chains…
An important problem in the implementation of Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms is to determine the convergence time, or the number of iterations before the chain is close to stationarity. For many Markov chains used in practice this time…
We study the limit behaviour of upper and lower bounds on expected time averages in imprecise Markov chains; a generalised type of Markov chain where the local dynamics, traditionally characterised by transition probabilities, are now…
We develop a new bidirectional algorithm for estimating Markov chain multi-step transition probabilities: given a Markov chain, we want to estimate the probability of hitting a given target state in $\ell$ steps after starting from a given…
We consider a time-average estimator $f_{k}$ of a functional of a Markov chain. Under a coupling assumption, we show that the expectation of $f_{k}$ has a limit $\mu$ as the number of time-steps goes to infinity. We describe a modification…
A sequence of Markov chains is said to exhibit (total variation) cutoff if the convergence to stationarity in total variation distance is abrupt. We consider reversible lazy chains. We prove a necessary and sufficient condition for the…
We propose methods to estimate the individual $\beta$-mixing coefficients of a real-valued geometrically ergodic Markov process from a single sample-path $X_0,X_1, \dots,X_n$. Under standard smoothness conditions on the densities, namely,…
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…
In the thesis we take the split chain approach to analyzing Markov chains and use it to establish fixed-width results for estimators obtained via Markov chain Monte Carlo procedures (MCMC). Theoretical results include necessary and…
We present a closed-form, computable expression for the expected number of times any transition event occurs during the transient phase of a reducible Markov chain. Examples of events include time to absorption, number of visits to a state,…
We show how to map the states of an ergodic Markov chain to Euclidean space so that the squared distance between states is the expected commuting time. We find a minimax characterization of commuting times, and from this we get monotonicity…
We consider the time dependent probability distribution of a coarse grained observable Y whose evolution is governed by a discrete time map. If the map is mixing, the time dependent one-step transition probabilities converge in the long…
The convergence, convergence rate and expected hitting time play fundamental roles in the analysis of randomised search heuristics. This paper presents a unified Markov chain approach to studying them. Using the approach, the sufficient and…
Many modern techniques employed in physics, such a computation of path integrals, rely on random walks on graphs that can be represented as Markov chains. Traditionally, estimates of running times of such sampling algorithms are computed…
In the paper, we study a new rate of convergence estimate for homogeneous discrete-time nonlinear Markov chains based on the Markov-Dobrushin condition. This result generalizes the convergence estimates for any positive number of transition…
Estimating the transition dynamics of controlled Markov chains is crucial in fields such as time series analysis, reinforcement learning, and system exploration. Traditional non-parametric density estimation methods often assume independent…
We investigate the statistical complexity of estimating the parameters of a discrete-state Markov chain kernel from a single long sequence of state observations. In the finite case, we characterize (modulo logarithmic factors) the minimax…
In this work, we are concerned with existence and uniqueness of invariant measures for path-dependent random diffusions and their time discretizations. The random diffusion here means a diffusion process living in a random environment…
This paper aims at improving the convergence to equilibrium of finite ergodic Markov chains via permutations and projections. First, we prove that a specific mixture of permuted Markov chains arises naturally as a projection under the KL…
We provide explicit nonasymptotic estimates for the rate of convergence of empirical means of Markov chains, together with a Gaussian or exponential control on the deviations of empirical means. These estimates hold under a "positive…
We present a novel approach to quantizing Markov chains. The approach is based on the Markov chain coupling method, which is frequently used to prove fast mixing. Given a particular coupling, e.g., a grand coupling, we construct a…