Related papers: Assessing significance in a Markov chain without m…
Given an infinitesimal perturbation of a discrete-time finite Markov chain, we seek the states that are stable despite the perturbation, \textit{i.e.} the states whose weights in the stationary distributions can be bounded away from $0$ as…
Given a sequence $(\mathfrak{X}_i, \mathscr{K}_i)_{i=1}^\infty$ of Markov chains, the cut-off phenomenon describes a period of transition to stationarity which is asymptotically lower order than the mixing time. We study mixing times and…
We compute the stationary distribution of a continuous-time Markov chain which is constructed by gluing together two finite, irreducible Markov chains by identifying a pair of states of one chain with a pair of states of the other and…
We study a model of a polling system, that is, a collection of $d$ queues with a single server that switches from queue to queue. The service time distribution and arrival rates change randomly every time a queue is emptied. This model is…
We propose a model of random walks on weighted graphs where the weights are interval valued, and connect it to reversible imprecise Markov chains. While the theory of imprecise Markov chains is now well established, this is a first attempt…
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…
We present a general method to derive the metastable behavior of weakly mixing Markov chains. This approach is based on properties of the resolvent equations and can be applied to metastable dynamics which do not satisfy the mixing…
In the analysis of Markov chains and processes, it is sometimes convenient to replace an unbounded state space with a "truncated" bounded state space. When such a replacement is made, one often wants to know whether the equilibrium behavior…
We study the accurate and efficient computation of the expected number of times each state is visited in discrete- and continuous-time Markov chains. To obtain sound accuracy guarantees efficiently, we lift interval iteration and…
This paper studies the estimation of low-rank Markov chains from empirical trajectories. We propose a non-convex estimator based on rank-constrained likelihood maximization. Statistical upper bounds are provided for the Kullback-Leiber…
We investigate the mixing properties of a finite Markov chain in random environment defined as a mixture of a deterministic chain and a chain whose state space has been permuted uniformly at random. This work is the counterpart of a…
In the first part of this thesis, we study a Markov chain on $\mathbb{R}_+ \times S$, where $\mathbb{R}_+$ is the non-negative real numbers and $S$ is a finite set, in which when the $\mathbb{R}_+$-coordinate is large, the $S$-coordinate of…
Ergodic properties and asymptotic stationarity are investigated in this paper for the pseudo-covariance matrix (PCM) of a recursive state estimator which is robust against parametric uncertainties and is based on plant output measurements…
The spectral gap $\gamma$ of a finite, ergodic, and reversible Markov chain is an important parameter measuring the asymptotic rate of convergence. In applications, the transition matrix $P$ may be unknown, yet one sample of the chain up to…
Stein discrepancies have emerged as a powerful tool for retrospective improvement of Markov chain Monte Carlo output. However, the question of how to design Markov chains that are well-suited to such post-processing has yet to be addressed.…
Perfect sampling is a technique that uses coupling arguments to provide a sample from the stationary distribution of a Markov chain in a finite time without ever computing the distribution. This technique is very efficient if all the events…
Let $X$ be the constrained random walk on ${\mathbb Z}_+^2$ having increments $(1,0)$, $(-1,1)$, $(0,-1)$ with jump probabilities $\lambda(M_k)$, $\mu_1(M_k)$, and $\mu_2(M_k)$ where $M$ is an irreducible aperiodic finite state Markov…
Markov chains with variable length are useful parsimonious stochastic models able to generate most stationary sequence of discrete symbols. The idea is to identify the suffixes of the past, called contexts, that are relevant to predict the…
We introduce a new Markov Chain called the Cycle Walk for sampling measures of graph partitions where the partition elements have roughly equal size. Such Markov Chains are of current interest in the generation and evaluation of political…
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…