Related papers: Approximate Sampling of Graphs with Near-$P$-stabl…
Social networks have a small number of large hubs, and a large number of small dense communities. We propose a generative model that captures both hub and dense structures. Based on recent results about graphons on line graphs, our model is…
This paper aims at improving the convergence to equilibrium of finite ergodic Markov chains via permutations and projections. First, we prove that a specific mixture of permuted Markov chains arises naturally as a projection under the KL…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) has been the de facto technique for sampling and inference of large graphs such as online social networks. At the heart of MCMC lies the ability to construct an ergodic Markov chain that attains any given…
Markov chain Monte Carlo is widely used in a variety of scientific applications to generate approximate samples from intractable distributions. A thorough understanding of the convergence and mixing properties of these Markov chains can be…
We analyze the properties of degree-preserving Markov chains based on elementary edge switchings in undirected and directed graphs. We give exact yet simple formulas for the mobility of a graph (the number of possible moves) in terms of its…
We show how to exploit symmetries of a graph to efficiently compute the fastest mixing Markov chain on the graph (i.e., find the transition probabilities on the edges to minimize the second-largest eigenvalue modulus of the transition…
The mixing time of a Markov chain determines how fast the iterates of the Markov chain converge to the stationary distribution; however, it does not control the dependencies between samples along the Markov chain. In this paper, we study…
In this paper, we present a novel iterative Monte Carlo method for approximating the stationary probability of a single state of a positive recurrent Markov chain. We utilize the characterization that the stationary probability of a state…
Discrete distributions, particularly in high-dimensional deep models, are often highly multimodal due to inherent discontinuities. While gradient-based discrete sampling has proven effective, it is susceptible to becoming trapped in local…
Probabilistic models are conceptually powerful tools for finding structure in data, but their practical effectiveness is often limited by our ability to perform inference in them. Exact inference is frequently intractable, so approximate…
The time to converge to the steady state of a finite Markov chain can be greatly reduced by a lifting operation, which creates a new Markov chain on an expanded state space. For a class of quadratic objectives, we show an analogous behavior…
We consider state-aggregation schemes for Markov chains from an information-theoretic perspective. Specifically, we consider aggregating the states of a Markov chain such that the mutual information of the aggregated states separated by T…
Many real-world phenomena can be modelled as dynamical processes on networks, a prominent example being the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19. Mean-field approximations are a widely used tool to analyse such dynamical processes…
This paper presents a novel theoretical Monte Carlo Markov chain procedure in the framework of graphs. It specifically deals with the construction of a Markov chain whose empirical distribution converges to a given reference one. The Markov…
Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms are invaluable tools for exploring stationary properties of physical systems, especially in situations where direct sampling is unfeasible. Common implementations of Monte Carlo algorithms employ…
We consider the problem of estimating the measure of subsets in very large networks. A prime tool for this purpose is the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm. This algorithm, while extremely useful in many cases, still often suffers…
This paper considers the problem of randomized influence maximization over a Markovian graph process: given a fixed set of nodes whose connectivity graph is evolving as a Markov chain, estimate the probability distribution (over this fixed…
How can we approximate sparse graphs and sequences of sparse graphs (with unbounded average degree)? We consider convergence in the first $k$ moments of the graph spectrum (equivalent to the numbers of closed $k$-walks) appropriately…
Motivated by robotic surveillance applications, this paper studies the novel problem of maximizing the return time entropy of a Markov chain, subject to a graph topology with travel times and stationary distribution. The return time entropy…
We prove rapid mixing for certain Markov chains on the set $S_n$ of permutations on $1,2,\dots,n$ in which adjacent transpositions are made with probabilities that depend on the items being transposed. Typically, when in state $\sigma$, a…