Related papers: Comparing the Switch and Curveball Markov Chains f…
This paper analyzes a (1, $\lambda$)-Evolution Strategy, a randomized comparison-based adaptive search algorithm, optimizing a linear function with a linear constraint. The algorithm uses resampling to handle the constraint. Two cases are…
Markov chain Monte Carlo methods have become standard tools in statistics to sample from complex probability measures. Many available techniques rely on discrete-time reversible Markov chains whose transition kernels build up over the…
It has become increasingly easy nowadays to collect approximate posterior samples via fast algorithms such as variational Bayes, but concerns exist about the estimation accuracy. It is tempting to build solutions that exploit approximate…
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…
This paper derives exponential tail bounds and polynomial moment inequalities for the spectral norm deviation of a random matrix from its mean value. The argument depends on a matrix extension of Stein's method of exchangeable pairs for…
Reversible Markov chains play a central role in stochastic modelling and in algorithms such as Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). Motivated by the fundamental importance of reversibility in classical settings, this paper develops a…
One of the simplest methods of generating a random graph with a given degree sequence is provided by the Monte Carlo Markov Chain method using switches. The switch Markov chain converges to the uniform distribution, but generally the rate…
Motivated by techniques developed in recent progress on lower bounds for sublinear time algorithms (Behnezhad, Roghani and Rubinstein, STOC 2023, FOCS 2023, and STOC 2024) we introduce and study a new class of randomized algorithmic…
We study the Markov chain on $\mathbf{F}_p$ obtained by applying a function $f$ and adding $\pm\gamma$ with equal probability. When $f$ is a linear function, this is the well-studied Chung--Diaconis--Graham process. We consider two cases:…
In this paper, we present a novel iterative Monte Carlo method for approximating the stationary probability of a single state of a positive recurrent Markov chain. We utilize the characterization that the stationary probability of a state…
Lifted Markov chains are Markov chains on graphs with added local "memory" and can be used to mix towards a target distribution faster than their memoryless counterparts. Upper and lower bounds on the achievable performance have been…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are based on the construction of a Markov chain with transition probabilities leaving invariant a probability distribution of interest. In this work, we look at these transition probabilities as…
Markov chain sampling methods that automatically adapt to characteristics of the distribution being sampled can be constructed by exploiting the principle that one can sample from a distribution by sampling uniformly from the region under…
In this paper we consider a simple Markov chain for bipartite graphs with given degree sequence on $n$ vertices. We show that the mixing time of this Markov chain is bounded above by a polynomial in $n$ in case of {\em semi-regular} degree…
Quantum computers provide an opportunity to efficiently sample from probability distributions that include non-trivial interference effects between amplitudes. Using a simple process wherein all possible state histories can be specified by…
We take on a Random Matrix theory viewpoint to study the spectrum of certain reversible Markov chains in random environment. As the number of states tends to infinity, we consider the global behavior of the spectrum, and the local behavior…
We give a new rapid mixing result for a natural random walk on the independent sets of a graph $G$. We show that when $G$ has bounded treewidth, this random walk -- known as the Glauber dynamics for the hardcore model -- mixes rapidly for…
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…
Markov chain Monte Carlo is a class of algorithms for drawing Markovian samples from high-dimensional target densities to approximate the numerical integration associated with computing statistical expectation, especially in Bayesian…
Spectral methods have proven to be a highly effective tool in understanding the intrinsic geometry of a high-dimensional data set $\left\{x_i \right\}_{i=1}^{n} \subset \mathbb{R}^d$. The key ingredient is the construction of a Markov chain…