Related papers: Hoeffding's lemma for Markov Chains and its applic…

This paper concerns error bounds for recursive equations subject to Markovian disturbances. Motivating examples abound within the fields of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and Reinforcement Learning (RL), and many of these algorithms can be…

Random walks are a fundamental model in applied mathematics and are a common example of a Markov chain. The limiting stationary distribution of the Markov chain represents the fraction of the time spent in each state during the stochastic…

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…

In this paper, we investigate the functional central limit theorem for stochastic processes associated to partial sums of additive functionals of reversible Markov chains with general spate space, under the normalization standard deviation…

We address the problem of estimating the mixing time $t_{\mathsf{mix}}$ of an arbitrary ergodic finite-state Markov chain from a single trajectory of length $m$. The reversible case was addressed by Hsu et al. [2019], who left the general…

In this paper, we study first the problem of nonparametric estimation of the stationary density $f$ of a discrete-time Markov chain $(X_i)$. We consider a collection of projection estimators on finite dimensional linear spaces. We select an…

We study a colored generalization of the famous simple-switch Markov chain for sampling the set of graphs with a fixed degree sequence. Here we consider the space of graphs with colored vertices, in which we fix the degree sequence and…

This note presents conjectures on polynomial/algebraic/sub-exponential convergence of transition probabilities for $\lambda$-null recurrent and $\lambda$-transient Markov chains in continuous time. The only known positive examples are in…

This paper develops an optimal Chernoff type bound for the probabilities of large deviations of sums $\sum_{k=1}^n f (X_k)$ where $f$ is a real-valued function and $(X_k)_{k \in \mathbb{Z}_{\ge 0}}$ is a finite state Markov chain with an…

A discrete-time Markov chain can be transformed into a new Markov chain by looking at its states along iterations of an almost surely finite stopping time. By the optional stopping theorem, any bounded harmonic function with respect to the…

We prove the first Chernoff-Hoeffding bounds for general nonreversible finite-state Markov chains based on the standard L_1 (variation distance) mixing-time of the chain. Specifically, consider an ergodic Markov chain M and a weight…

We show the following. \begin{theorem} Let $M$ be an finite-state ergodic time-reversible Markov chain with transition matrix $P$ and conductance $\phi$. Let $\lambda \in (0,1)$ be an eigenvalue of $P$. Then, $$\phi^2 + \lambda^2 \leq 1$$…

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…

Questions are posed regarding the influence that the column sums of the transition probabilities of a stochastic matrix (with row sums all one) have on the stationary distribution, the mean first passage times and the Kemeny constant of the…

We prove a Chernoff-type bound for sums of matrix-valued random variables sampled via a regular (aperiodic and irreducible) finite Markov chain. Specially, consider a random walk on a regular Markov chain and a Hermitian matrix-valued…

We investigate and prove the mathematical properties of a general class of one-dimensional unimodal smooth maps perturbed with a heteroscedastic noise. Specifically, we investigate the stability of the associated Markov chain, show the weak…

We study the approximation of a Markov chain on a reduced state space, for both discrete- and continuous-time Markov chains. In this context, we extend the existing theory of formal error bounds for the approximated transient distributions.…

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 the process is approximately…

Slow mixing is the central hurdle when working with Markov chains, especially those used for Monte Carlo approximations (MCMC). In many applications, it is only of interest to estimate the stationary expectations of a small set of…

In this article, we establish Hoeffding's inequality for bounded Lipschitz functions of a class of not necessarily irreducible Markov models. The result complements the existing literature on this topic where Hoeffding's inequality for…