Related papers: Shepherding Hordes of Markov Chains
The Massively Parallel Computation (MPC) model serves as a common abstraction of many modern large-scale data processing frameworks, and has been receiving increasingly more attention over the past few years, especially in the context of…
Markov chains are a common framework for individual-based state and time discrete models in ecology and evolution. Their use, however, is largely limited to systems with a low number of states, since the transition matrices involved pose…
This paper presents two new approaches to decomposing and solving large Markov decision problems (MDPs), a partial decoupling method and a complete decoupling method. In these approaches, a large, stochastic decision problem is divided into…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have not been broadly adopted in Bayesian neural networks (BNNs). This paper initially reviews the main challenges in sampling from the parameter posterior of a neural network via MCMC. Such…
We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) with multiple limit-average (or mean-payoff) objectives. There exist two different views: (i) the expectation semantics, where the goal is to optimize the expected mean-payoff objective, and (ii)…
Model checking undiscounted reachability and expected-reward properties on Markov decision processes (MDPs) is key for the verification of systems that act under uncertainty. Popular algorithms are policy iteration and variants of value…
We are interested in the analysis of very large continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) with many distinct rates. Such models arise naturally in the context of reliability analysis, e.g., of computer network performability analysis, of power…
Probabilistic hyperproperties describe probabilistic relations between multiple sets of executions in a stochastic system. Prominent examples include information-theoretic characterizations of security and privacy policies. However, model…
Basic Parallel Processes (BPPs) are a well-known subclass of Petri Nets. They are the simplest common model of concurrent programs that allows unbounded spawning of processes. In the probabilistic version of BPPs, every process generates…
Markov chains are the de facto finite-state model for stochastic dynamical systems, and Markov decision processes (MDPs) extend Markov chains by incorporating non-deterministic behaviors. Given an MDP and rewards on states, a classical…
In this paper we investigate the continuum limits of a class of Markov chains. The investigation of such limits is motivated by the desire to model very large networks. We show that under some conditions, a sequence of Markov chains…
Discrete-time Markov Chains (MCs) and Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are two standard formalisms in system analysis. Their main associated quantitative objectives are hitting probabilities, discounted sum, and mean payoff. Although there…
This paper introduces Farkas certificates for lower and upper bounds on minimal and maximal reachability probabilities in Markov decision processes (MDP), which we derive using an MDP-variant of Farkas' Lemma. The set of all such…
A basic model in sequential decision making is the Markov decision process (MDP), which is extended to Robust MDPs (RMDPs) by allowing uncertainty in transition probabilities and optimizing against the worst-case transition probabilities…
A standard method for designing randomized algorithms to approximately count the number of solutions of a problem in $\#$P, is by constructing a rapidly mixing Markov chain converging to the uniform distribution over this set of solutions.…
We consider a class of optimization problems over stochastic variables where the algorithm can learn information about the value of any variable through a series of costly steps; we model this information acquisition process as a Markov…
Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are stochastic optimization problems that model situations where a decision maker controls a system based on its state. Partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are generalizations of MDPs where…
Large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) require planning algorithms with runtime independent of the number of states of the MDP. We consider the planning problem in MDPs using linear value function approximation with only weak…
Model Predictive Control (MPC) is an optimal control algorithm with strong stability and robustness guarantees. Despite its popularity in robotics and industrial applications, the main challenge in deploying MPC is its high computation…
Cumulative prospect theory (CPT) is the first theory for decision-making under uncertainty that combines full theoretical soundness and empirically realistic features [P.P. Wakker - Prospect theory: For risk and ambiguity, Page 2]. While…