Related papers: John's Walk
Recall that a convex body $K$ is in John's position if the unit Euclidean ball is the maximal volume ellipsoid contained in $K$. Approximating convex body in John's position by polytopes we obtain the following results. 1. Let $n>R_n\ge 1$…
We prove that every random walk in a uniformly elliptic random environment satisfying the cone mixing condition and a non-effective polynomial ballisticity condition with high enough degree has an asymptotic direction.
We study random walks on the giant component of the Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi random graph ${\cal G}(n,p)$ where $p=\lambda/n$ for $\lambda>1$ fixed. The mixing time from a worst starting point was shown by Fountoulakis and Reed, and independently…
We show sufficient conditions under which the \textsc{BallWalk} algorithm mixes fast in a bounded connected subset of $\Real^n$. In particular, we show fast mixing if the space is the transformation of a convex space under a smooth…
We study the problem of "isotropically rounding" a polytope $K\subset\mathbb{R}^n$, that is, computing a linear transformation which makes the uniform distribution on the polytope have roughly identity covariance matrix. We assume $K$ is…
The famous theorem of Fritz John states that any convex body has a unique maximal volume inscribed ellipsoid, known as the John Ellipsoid. Computing the John Ellipsoid is a fundamental problem in convex optimization. In this paper, we focus…
Many classical randomized algorithms (e.g., approximation algorithms for #P-complete problems) utilize the following random walk algorithm for {\em almost uniform sampling} from a state space $S$ of cardinality $N$: run a symmetric ergodic…
Let $K$ be a convex body in $\mathbb{R}^d$ which slides freely in a ball. Let $K^{(n)}$ denote the intersection of $n$ closed half-spaces containing $K$ whose bounding hyperplanes are independent and identically distributed according to a…
We consider a variant of random walks on finite groups. At each step, we choose an element from a set of generators ("directions") uniformly, and an integer from a power law ("speed") distribution associated with the chosen direction. We…
We study the convex hull of the first $n$ steps of a planar random walk, and present large-$n$ asymptotic results on its perimeter length $L_n$, diameter $D_n$, and shape. In the case where the walk has a non-zero mean drift, we show that…
Given a Lipschitz or smooth convex function $\, f:K \to \mathbb{R}$ for a bounded polytope $K \subseteq \mathbb{R}^d$ defined by $m$ inequalities, we consider the problem of sampling from the log-concave distribution $\pi(\theta) \propto…
We consider a random walk on a homogeneous space $G/\Lambda$ where $G$ is a non-compact simple Lie group and $\Lambda$ is a lattice. The walk is driven by a probability measure $\mu$ on $G$ whose support generates a Zariski-dense subgroup.…
In this paper, we provide an application to the random distance-$t$ walk in finite planes and derive asymptotic formulas (as $q \to \infty$) for the probability of return to start point after $\ell$ steps based on the "vertical"…
Hit-and-Run is known to be one of the best random sampling algorithms, its mixing time is polynomial in dimension. Nevertheless, in practice the number of steps required to achieve uniformly distributed samples is rather high. We propose…
In this paper we study a random walk in a one-dimensional dynamic random environment consisting of a collection of independent particles performing simple symmetric random walks in a Poisson equilibrium with density $\rho \in (0,\infty)$.…
Search patterns of randomly oriented steps of different lengths have been observed on all scales of the biological world, ranging from the microscopic to the ecological, including in protein motors, bacteria, T-cells, honeybees, marine…
In 1948, Fritz John proposed a theorem stating that every convex body has a unique maximal volume inscribed ellipsoid, known as the John ellipsoid. The John ellipsoid has become fundamental in mathematics, with extensive applications in…
We present a new random walk for uniformly sampling high-dimensional convex bodies. It achieves state-of-the-art runtime complexity with stronger guarantees on the output than previously known, namely in R\'enyi divergence (which implies…
We show that the classical Kac's random walk on $(n-1)$-sphere $S^{n-1}$ starting from the point mass at $e_1$ mixes in $\mathcal{O}(n^5(\log n)^3)$ steps in total variation distance. The main argument uses a truncation of the running…
We analyze the hit-and-run algorithm for sampling uniformly from an isotropic convex body $K$ in $n$ dimensions. We show that the algorithm mixes in time $\tilde{O}(n^2/ \psi_n^2)$, where $\psi_n$ is the smallest isoperimetric constant for…