Related papers: Impartial Redistricting: A Markov Chain Approach
Reparameterizing a probabilisitic system is common advice for improving the performance of a statistical algorithm like Markov chain Monte Carlo, even though in theory such reparameterizations should leave the system, and the performance of…
Ranking the participants of a tournament has applications in voting, paired comparisons analysis, sports and other domains. In this paper we introduce bipartite tournaments, which model situations in which two different kinds of entity…
In peer selection agents must choose a subset of themselves for an award or a prize. As agents are self-interested, we want to design algorithms that are impartial, so that an individual agent cannot affect their own chance of being…
Probabilistic graphical models play a crucial role in machine learning and have wide applications in various fields. One pivotal subset is undirected graphical models, also known as Markov random fields. In this work, we investigate the…
We describe an approach for exploiting structure in Markov Decision Processes with continuous state variables. At each step of the dynamic programming, the state space is dynamically partitioned into regions where the value function is the…
We present a major improvement to the incremental pruning algorithm for solving partially observable Markov decision processes. Our technique targets the cross-sum step of the dynamic programming (DP) update, a key source of complexity in…
In this paper we consider the problem of computing the stationary distribution of nearly completely decomposable Markov processes, a well-established area in the classical theory of Markov processes with broad applications in the design,…
Gerrymandering is a pervasive problem within the US political system. In the past decade, methods based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling and statistical outlier tests have been proposed to quantify gerrymandering and were used as…
When a beneficial mutation occurs in a population, the new, favored allele may spread to the entire population. This process is known as a selective sweep. Suppose we sample $n$ individuals at the end of a selective sweep. If we focus on a…
Landau, Reid, and Yershov [A Fair Division Solution to the Problem of Redistricting, \textit{Social Choice and Welfare}, 2008] propose a protocol for drawing legislative districts based on a two player fair division process, where each…
Participatory budgeting is one of the exciting developments in deliberative grassroots democracy. We concentrate on approval elections and propose proportional representation axioms in participatory budgeting, by generalizing relevant…
It is pointed out that separability problem for arbitrary multi-partite states can be fully solved by a finite size, elementary recursive algorithm. In the worse case scenario, the underlying numerical procedure, may grow doubly…
We consider the problem of protecting and manipulating elections by recounting and changing ballots, respectively. Our setting involves a plurality-based election held across multiple districts, and the problem formulations are based on the…
We propose a Markov chain simulation method to generate simple connected random graphs with a specified degree sequence and level of clustering. The networks generated by our algorithm are random in all other respects and can thus serve as…
Redistricting practitioners must balance many competing constraints and criteria when drawing district boundaries. To aid in this process, researchers have developed many methods for optimizing districting plans according to one or more…
The paper develops a general framework for constrained clustering which is based on the close connection of geometric clustering and diagrams. Various new structural and algorithmic results are proved (and known results generalized and…
Risk assessment algorithms in criminal justice put people's lives at the discretion of a simple statistical tool. This thesis explores how algorithmic decision-making in criminal policy can exhibit feedback effects, where disadvantage…
Probabilistic ideas and tools have recently begun to permeate into several fields where they had traditionally not played a major role, including fields such as numerical linear algebra and optimization. One of the key ways in which these…
Partially-Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are a well-known stochastic model for sequential decision making under limited information. We consider the EXPTIME-hard problem of synthesising policies that almost-surely reach some…
Recursive stochastic algorithms have gained significant attention in the recent past due to data driven applications. Examples include stochastic gradient descent for solving large-scale optimization problems and empirical dynamic…