Related papers: Introducing user-prescribed constraints in Markov …

We present a novel distributionally robust framework for dynamic programming that uses kernel methods to design feedback control policies. Specifically, we leverage kernel mean embedding to map the transition probabilities governing the…

Markov chain Monte Carlo methods have become popular in statistics as versatile techniques to sample from complicated probability distributions. In this work, we propose a method to parameterize and train transition kernels of Markov chains…

We investigate the statistical complexity of estimating the parameters of a discrete-state Markov chain kernel from a single long sequence of state observations. In the finite case, we characterize (modulo logarithmic factors) the minimax…

We study stochastic optimization algorithms for constrained nonconvex stochastic optimization problems with Markovian data. In particular, we focus on the case when the transition kernel of the Markov chain is state-dependent. Such…

We propose an adaptive estimator for the stationary distribution of a bifurcating Markov Chain on $\mathbb R^d$. Bifurcating Markov chains (BMC for short) are a class of stochastic processes indexed by regular binary trees. A kernel…

In this paper, we study a Markov chain-based stochastic gradient algorithm in general Hilbert spaces, aiming at approximating the optimal solution of a quadratic loss function. We establish probabilistic upper bounds on its convergence. We…

Empirical data can often be considered as samples from a set of probability distributions. Kernel methods have emerged as a natural approach for learning to classify these distributions. Although numerous kernels between distributions have…

We consider the problem of learning low-dimensional representations for large-scale Markov chains. We formulate the task of representation learning as that of mapping the state space of the model to a low-dimensional state space, called the…

In this paper we develop a statistical estimation technique to recover the transition kernel $P$ of a Markov chain $X=(X_m)_{m \in \mathbb N}$ in presence of censored data. We consider the situation where only a sub-sequence of $X$ is…

We consider the problem of estimating the asymptotic variance of a function defined on a Markov chain, an important step for statistical inference of the stationary mean. We design a novel recursive estimator that requires $O(1)$…

This paper considers stochastic-constrained stochastic optimization where the stochastic constraint is to satisfy that the expectation of a random function is below a certain threshold. In particular, we study the setting where data samples…

Thermalization is one of the most important phenomena in statistical physics. Often, the transition probabilities between different states in the phase space is or can be approximated by constants. In this case, the system can be described…

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…

In this paper, we propose a variance reduction approach for Markov chains based on additive control variates and the minimization of an appropriate estimate for the asymptotic variance. We focus on the particular case when control variates…

We formulate some simple conditions under which a Markov chain may be approximated by the solution to a differential equation, with quantifiable error probabilities. The role of a choice of coordinate functions for the Markov chain is…

Markov chains for probability distributions related to matrix product states and 1D Hamiltonians are introduced. With appropriate 'inverse temperature' schedules, these chains can be combined into a random approximation scheme for ground…

Reversibility is a key property of Markov chains, central to algorithms such as Metropolis-Hastings and other MCMC methods. Yet many applications yield non-reversible chains, motivating the problem of approximating them by reversible ones…

This paper studies the approximation of optimal control policies by quantized (discretized) policies for a very general class of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The problem is motivated by applications in networked control systems,…

Markov chains have been widely employed as a fundamental model in the studies of probabilistic and stochastic communicating and concurrent systems. It is well-understood that decomposition techniques play a key role in reachability analysis…

The use of heuristics to assess the convergence and compress the output of Markov chain Monte Carlo can be sub-optimal in terms of the empirical approximations that are produced. Typically a number of the initial states are attributed to…