Related papers: New classes of degree sequences with fast mixing s…
We show a strict hierarchy among various edge and vertex expansion properties of Markov chains. This gives easy proofs of a range of bounds, both classical and new, on chi-square distance, spectral gap and mixing time. The 2-gradient is…
This paper gives a new algorithm for sampling tree-weighted partitions of a large class of planar graphs. Formally, the tree-weighted distribution on $k$-partitions of a graph weights $k$-partitions proportional to the product of the number…
We present an algorithm for learning mixtures of Markov chains and Markov decision processes (MDPs) from short unlabeled trajectories. Specifically, our method handles mixtures of Markov chains with optional control input by going through a…
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 present two models of sparse dynamic networks that display transitivity - the tendency for vertices sharing a common neighbour to be neighbours of one another. Our first network is a continuous time Markov chain $G=\{G_t=(V,E_t), t\ge…
We show that a simple Markov chain, the Glauber dynamics, can efficiently sample independent sets almost uniformly at random in polynomial time for graphs in a certain class. The class is determined by boundedness of a new graph parameter…
Graph convolution is a fundamental building block for many deep neural networks on graph-structured data. In this paper, we introduce a simple, yet very effective graph convolutional network with skip connections for semi-supervised anomaly…
In this paper we introduce extensions and modifications of the classical degree sequence graphic realization problem studied by Erd\H{o}s-Gallai and Havel-Hakimi, as well as of the corresponding connected graphic realization version. We…
A large number of modern applications ranging from listening songs online and browsing the Web to using a navigation app on a smartphone generate a plethora of user trails. Clustering such trails into groups with a common sequence pattern…
We consider topological Markov chains (also called Markov shifts) on countable graphs. We show that a transient graph can be extended to a recurrent graph of equal entropy which is either positive recurrent of null recurrent, and we give an…
We study Markov chains for $\alpha$-orientations of plane graphs, these are orientations where the outdegree of each vertex is prescribed by the value of a given function $\alpha$. The set of $\alpha$-orientations of a plane graph has a…
Global variational approximation methods in graphical models allow efficient approximate inference of complex posterior distributions by using a simpler model. The choice of the approximating model determines a tradeoff between the…
Statistical analysis of bipartite networks frequently requires randomly sampling from the set of all bipartite networks with the same degree sequence as an observed network. Trade algorithms offer an efficient way to generate samples of…
We present a sequential sampling methodology for weakly structural Markov laws, arising naturally in a Bayesian structure learning context for decomposable graphical models. As a key component of our suggested approach, we show that the…
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…
We prove rapid mixing for certain Markov chains on the set $S_n$ of permutations on $1,2,\dots,n$ in which adjacent transpositions are made with probabilities that depend on the items being transposed. Typically, when in state $\sigma$, a…
The mixing time of a Markov chain determines how fast the iterates of the Markov chain converge to the stationary distribution; however, it does not control the dependencies between samples along the Markov chain. In this paper, we study…
A key task in Bayesian machine learning is sampling from distributions that are only specified up to a partition function (i.e., constant of proportionality). One prevalent example of this is sampling posteriors in parametric distributions,…
Queue networks describe complex stochastic systems of both theoretical and practical interest. They provide the means to assess alterations, diagnose poor performance and evaluate robustness across sets of interconnected resources. In the…
We study the problem of generating connected random graphs with no self-loops or multiple edges and that, in addition, have a given degree sequence. The generation method we focus on is the edge-switching Markov-chain method, whose…