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We study irreducible time-homogenous Markov chains with finite state space in discrete time. We obtain results on the sensitivity of the stationary distribution and other statistical quantities with respect to perturbations of the…
We present a nonparametric prior over reversible Markov chains. We use completely random measures, specifically gamma processes, to construct a countably infinite graph with weighted edges. By enforcing symmetry to make the edges undirected…
We consider the problem of uniformly generating a spanning tree, of a connected undirected graph. This process is useful to compute statistics, namely for phylogenetic trees. We describe a Markov chain for producing these trees. For cycle…
We investigate absorption, i.e., almost sure convergence to an absorbing state, in time-varying (non-homogeneous) discrete-time Markov chains with finite state space. We consider systems that can switch among a finite set of transition…
We present an improved coupling technique for analyzing the mixing time of Markov chains. Using our technique, we simplify and extend previous results for sampling colorings and independent sets. Our approach uses properties of the…
We develop a general theory for Markov chains whose transition probabilities are the coefficients of descent operators on combinatorial Hopf algebras. These model the breaking-then-recombining of combinational objects. Examples include the…
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…
Consider a finite irreducible Markov chain with invariant distribution $\pi$. We use the inner product induced by $\pi$ and the associated heat operator to simplify and generalize some results related to graph partitioning and the small-set…
Time-homogeneous Markov chains are often used as disease progression models in studies of cost-effectiveness and optimal decision-making. Maximum likelihood estimation of these models can be challenging when data are collected at a time…
Let $G=(V,E)$ be a bipartite graph embedded in a plane (or $n$-holed torus). Two subgraphs of $G$ differ by a {\it $Z$-transformation} if their symmetric difference consists of the boundary edges of a single face---and if each subgraph…
Given graphs $G_1,\ldots,G_s$ all on a common vertex set and a graph $H$ with $e(H) = s$, a copy of $H$ is \emph{transversal} or \emph{rainbow} if it contains one edge from each $G_i$. We establish a stability result for transversal…
We consider Markovian models on graphs with local dynamics. We show that, under suitable conditions, such Markov chains exhibit both rapid convergence to equilibrium and strong concentration of measure in the stationary distribution. We…
It is a longstanding conjecture that every simple drawing of a complete graph on $n \geq 3$ vertices contains a crossing-free Hamiltonian cycle. We strengthen this conjecture to "there exists a crossing-free Hamiltonian path between each…
We propose a new approach for estimating the finite dimensional transition matrix of a Markov chain using a large number of independent sample paths observed at random times. The sample paths may be observed as few as two times, and the…
We consider sufficient conditions for the existence of $k$-th powers of Hamiltonian cycles in $n$-vertex graphs $G$ with minimum degree $\mu n$ for arbitrarily small $\mu>0$. About 20 years ago Koml\'os, Sark\"ozy, and Szemer\'edi resolved…
In the last decades the problem of metastability has been attacked on rigorous grounds via many different approaches and techniques which are briefly reviewed in this paper. It is then useful to understand connections between different…
We describe an algorithm for finding Hamilton cycles in random graphs. Our model is the random graph $G=\gc$. In this model $G$ is drawn uniformly from graphs with vertex set $[n]$, $m$ edges and minimum degree at least three. We focus on…
Markov random fields are used to model high dimensional distributions in a number of applied areas. Much recent interest has been devoted to the reconstruction of the dependency structure from independent samples from the Markov random…
Markov chain Monte Carlo is a class of algorithms for drawing Markovian samples from high-dimensional target densities to approximate the numerical integration associated with computing statistical expectation, especially in Bayesian…
We investigate the mixing properties of a finite Markov chain in random environment defined as a mixture of a deterministic chain and a chain whose state space has been permuted uniformly at random. This work is the counterpart of a…