Related papers: On Learning Markov Chains
We consider the problem of learning parametric distributions from their quantized samples in a network. Specifically, $n$ agents or sensors observe independent samples of an unknown parametric distribution; and each of them uses $k$ bits to…
When the initial and transition probabilities of a finite Markov chain in discrete time are not well known, we should perform a sensitivity analysis. This can be done by considering as basic uncertainty models the so-called credal sets that…
We study the problem of learning the Markov order in categorical sequences that represent paths in a network, i.e. sequences of variable lengths where transitions between states are constrained to a known graph. Such data pose challenges…
The assumption that data samples are independently identically distributed is the backbone of many learning algorithms. Nevertheless, datasets often exhibit rich structure in practice, and we argue that there exist some unknown order within…
Within psychology, neuroscience and artificial intelligence, there has been increasing interest in the proposal that the brain builds probabilistic models of sensory and linguistic input: that is, to infer a probabilistic model from a…
Markov chains are a natural and well understood tool for describing one-dimensional patterns in time or space. We show how to infer $k$-th order Markov chains, for arbitrary $k$, from finite data by applying Bayesian methods to both…
The predictive normalized maximum likelihood (pNML) approach has recently been proposed as the min-max optimal solution to the batch learning problem where both the training set and the test data feature are individuals, known sequences.…
We propose a novel method to learn intractable distributions from their samples. The main idea is to use a parametric distribution model, such as a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), to approximate intractable distributions by minimizing the…
We study the frontier between learnable and unlearnable hidden Markov models (HMMs). HMMs are flexible tools for clustering dependent data coming from unknown populations. The model parameters are known to be fully identifiable (up to…
The problem of estimating the Kullback-Leibler divergence $D(P\|Q)$ between two unknown distributions $P$ and $Q$ is studied, under the assumption that the alphabet size $k$ of the distributions can scale to infinity. The estimation is…
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 a stochastic program where the probability distribution of the uncertain problem parameters is unknown and only indirectly observed via finitely many correlated samples generated by an unknown Markov chain with $d$ states. We…
We consider the problem of performing inference with imprecise continuous-time hidden Markov chains, that is, imprecise continuous-time Markov chains that are augmented with random output variables whose distribution depends on the hidden…
Hidden Markov models (HMMs) are flexible tools for clustering dependent data coming from unknown populations, allowing nonparametric modelling of the population densities. Identifiability fails when the data is in fact independent and…
We consider the problem of predicting the next observation given a sequence of past observations, and consider the extent to which accurate prediction requires complex algorithms that explicitly leverage long-range dependencies. Perhaps…
We consider the problem of estimating the transition rate matrix of a continuous-time Markov chain from a finite-duration realisation of this process. We approach this problem in an imprecise probabilistic framework, using a set of prior…
In this paper, we study the following model of hidden Markov chain: $Y_i=X_i+\epsilon_i$, $i=1,...,n+1$ with $(X_i)$ a real-valued stationary Markov chain and $(\epsilon_i)_{1\leq i\leq n+1}$ a noise having a known distribution and…
Consider the problem of predicting the next symbol given a sample path of length n, whose joint distribution belongs to a distribution class that may have long-term memory. The goal is to compete with the conditional predictor that knows…
A classical problem for Markov chains is determining their stationary (or steady-state) distribution. This problem has an equally classical solution based on eigenvectors and linear equation systems. However, this approach does not scale to…
In the paper, we study a new rate of convergence estimate for homogeneous discrete-time nonlinear Markov chains based on the Markov-Dobrushin condition. This result generalizes the convergence estimates for any positive number of transition…