Related papers: A Markov Chain Algorithm for Compression in Self-O…
We present a novel approach to detecting and utilizing symmetries in probabilistic graphical models with two main contributions. First, we present a scalable approach to computing generating sets of permutation groups representing the…
Markov chain methods are remarkably successful in computational physics, machine learning, and combinatorial optimization. The cost of such methods often reduces to the mixing time, i.e., the time required to reach the steady state of the…
On a weakly Blackwell space we show how to define a Markov chain approximating problem, for the target problem. The approximating problem is proved to converge to the optimal reduced problem under different pseudometrics. A computational…
Reversibility is a key property of Markov chains, central to algorithms such as Metropolis-Hastings and other MCMC methods. Yet many applications yield non-reversible chains, motivating the problem of approximating them by reversible ones…
Graded posets frequently arise throughout combinatorics, where it is natural to try to count the number of elements of a fixed rank. These counting problems are often $\#\textbf{P}$-complete, so we consider approximation algorithms for…
Bayesian classification and regression with high order interactions is largely infeasible because Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) would need to be applied with a great many parameters, whose number increases rapidly with the order. In this…
Particle smoothers are widely used algorithms allowing to approximate the smoothing distribution in hidden Markov models. Existing algorithms often suffer from slow computational time or degeneracy. We propose in this paper a way to improve…
We present a reduced-dimension, ballistic deposition, Monte Carlo particle packing algorithm and discuss its application to the analysis of the microstructure of hard-sphere systems with broad particle size distributions. We extend our…
The goal of this thesis is to study the compression problems arising in distributed computing systematically. In the first part of the thesis, we study gradient compression for distributed first-order optimization. We begin by establishing…
Shape formation is a basic distributed problem for systems of computational mobile entities. Intensively studied for systems of autonomous mobile robots, it has recently been investigated in the realm of programmable matter. Namely, it has…
In the continuity of a recent paper ([6]), dealing with finite Markov chains, this paper proposes and analyzes a recursive algorithm for the approximation of the quasi-stationary distribution of a general Markov chain living on a compact…
We develop a framework for the compression of reversible Markov chains with rigorous error control. Given a subset of selected states, we construct reduced dynamics that can be lifted to an approximation of the full dynamics, and we prove…
The problem of electing a unique leader is central to all distributed systems, including programmable matter systems where particles have constant size memory. In this paper, we present a silent self-stabilising, deterministic, stationary,…
The analysis of parametrised systems is a growing field in verification, but the analysis of parametrised probabilistic systems is still in its infancy. This is partly because it is much harder: while there are beautiful cut-off results for…
Suppose there are $n$ Markov chains and we need to pay a per-step \emph{price} to advance them. The "destination" states of the Markov chains contain rewards; however, we can only get rewards for a subset of them that satisfy a…
Several recent publications investigated Markov-chain modelling of linear optimization by a $(1,\lambda)$-ES, considering both unconstrained and linearly constrained optimization, and both constant and varying step size. All of them assume…
We investigate computational issues in the distributed model Amoebots of programmable matter. In this model, the computational entities, called particles, are anonymous finite-state machines that operate and move on an hexagonal tasselation…
We consider the problem of controlling a fully specified Markov decision process (MDP), also known as the planning problem, when the state space is very large and calculating the optimal policy is intractable. Instead, we pursue the more…
In distribution compression, one aims to accurately summarize a probability distribution $\mathbb{P}$ using a small number of representative points. Near-optimal thinning procedures achieve this goal by sampling $n$ points from a Markov…
We compare different analytical and numerical methods for studying the partitions of a finite system into fragments. We propose a new numerical method of exploring the partition space by generating the Markov chains of partitions based on…