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We study the convergence of random function iterations for finding an invariant measure of the corresponding Markov operator. We call the problem of finding such an invariant measure the stochastic fixed point problem. This generalizes…
Markov chain Monte Carlo is an inherently serial algorithm. Although likelihood calculations for individual steps can sometimes be parallelized, the serial evolution of the process is widely viewed as incompatible with parallelization,…
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…
A key goal in the design of probabilistic inference algorithms is identifying and exploiting properties of the distribution that make inference tractable. Lifted inference algorithms identify symmetry as a property that enables efficient…
Consider any locally checkable labeling problem $\Pi$ in rooted regular trees: there is a finite set of labels $\Sigma$, and for each label $x \in \Sigma$ we specify what are permitted label combinations of the children for an internal node…
It is known that maximal entropy random walks and partition functions that count long paths on graphs tend to become localized near nodes with a high degree. Here, we revisit the simplest toy model of such a localization: a regular tree of…
Traditional methods for unsupervised learning of finite mixture models require to evaluate the likelihood of all components of the mixture. This becomes computationally prohibitive when the number of components is large, as it is, for…
For integer valued random variables, the translated Poisson distributions form a flexible family for approximation in total variation, in much the same way that the normal family is used for approximation in Kolmogorov distance. Using the…
Parametric Markov chains (pMC) are used to model probabilistic systems with unknown or partially known probabilities. Although (universal) pMC verification for reachability properties is known to be coETR-complete, there have been efforts…
We study the complexity of approximately evaluating the Ising and Tutte partition functions with complex parameters. Our results are partly motivated by the study of the quantum complexity classes BQP and IQP. Recent results show how to…
Given two discrete random variables $X$ and $Y$, with probability distributions ${\bf p} =(p_1, \ldots , p_n)$ and ${\bf q}=(q_1, \ldots , q_m)$, respectively, denote by ${\cal C}({\bf p}, {\bf q})$ the set of all couplings of ${\bf p}$ and…
An important part of problems in statistical physics and computer science can be expressed as the computation of marginal probabilities over a Markov Random Field. The belief propagation algorithm, which is an exact procedure to compute…
Matrix factorization methods are important tools in data mining and analysis. They can be used for many tasks, ranging from dimensionality reduction to visualization. In this paper we concentrate on the use of matrix factorizations for…
This paper deals with a complete bipartite matching problem with the objective of finding an optimal matching that maximizes a certain generic predefined utility function on the set of all matchings. After proving the NP-hardness of the…
In this paper a method based on a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm is proposed to compute the probability of a rare event. The conditional distribution of the underlying process given that the rare event occurs has the probability…
We apply a probabilistic approach to study the computational complexity of analog computers which solve linear programming problems. We analyze numerically various ensembles of linear programming problems and obtain, for each of these…
We consider synchronizing properties of Markov decision processes (MDP), viewed as generators of sequences of probability distributions over states. A probability distribution is p-synchronizing if the probability mass is at least p in some…
For many probability distributions of interest, it is quite difficult to obtain samples efficiently. Often, Markov chains are employed to obtain approximately random samples from these distributions. The primary drawback to traditional…
For different reversible Markov kernels on finite state spaces, we look for families of probability measures for which the time evolution almost remains in their convex hull. Motivated by signal processing problems and metastability studies…
The locality of a graph problem is the smallest distance $T$ such that each node can choose its own part of the solution based on its radius-$T$ neighborhood. In many settings, a graph problem can be solved efficiently with a distributed or…