Related papers: Sampling from convex sets with a cold start using …
Random walk-based sampling methods are gaining popularity and importance in characterizing large networks. While powerful, they suffer from the slow mixing problem when the graph is loosely connected, which results in poor estimation…
The Gibbs Sampler is a general method for sampling high-dimensional distributions, dating back to Turchin, 1971. In each step of the Gibbs Sampler, we pick a random coordinate and re-sample that coordinate from the distribution induced by…
We introduce Reflective Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (ReHMC), an HMC-based algorithm, to sample from a log-concave distribution restricted to a convex body. We prove that, starting from a warm start, the walk mixes to a log-concave target…
Random walks on graphs are an essential primitive for many randomised algorithms and stochastic processes. It is natural to ask how much can be gained by running $k$ multiple random walks independently and in parallel. Although the cover…
Let $G=(V,E)$ be a $d$-regular graph on $n$ vertices and let $\mu_0$ be a probability measure on $V$. The act of moving to a randomly chosen neighbor leads to a sequence of probability measures supported on $V$ given by $\mu_{k+1} = A…
Simple random walks are a basic staple of the foundation of probability theory and form the building block of many useful and complex stochastic processes. In this paper we study a natural generalization of the random walk to a process in…
We study approximations of smooth convex bodies by random ball-polytopes. We examine the following probability model: let $K\subset{\bf R}^d$ be a convex body such that $K$ slides freely in a ball of radius $R>0$ and has $C^2$ smooth…
Random walk algorithms are crucial for sampling and approximation problems in statistical physics and theoretical computer science. The mixing property is necessary for Markov chains to approach stationary distributions and is facilitated…
We study an example of a {\em hit-and-run} random walk on the symmetric group $\mathbf S_n$. Our starting point is the well understood {\em top-to-random} shuffle. In the hit-and-run version, at each {\em single step}, after picking the…
Let $K$ be a convex body in $\mathbb{R}^n$ and $f : \partial K \rightarrow \mathbb{R}_+$ a continuous, strictly positive function with $\int\limits_{\partial K} f(x) d \mu_{\partial K}(x) = 1$. We give an upper bound for the approximation…
A random walk is a basic stochastic process on graphs and a key primitive in the design of distributed algorithms. One of the most important features of random walks is that, under mild conditions, they converge to a stationary distribution…
When we want to simulate the realization of a symmetric simple random walk on $\mathbb Z^d$, we use $(2d)$-side fair dice to decide to which neighbor it jumps at each step if $d\geq 2$ or we simply use a fair coin when $d=1$. Assume that…
In this paper, we study the problem of sampling from distributions of the form p(x) \propto e^{-\beta f(x)} for some function f whose values and gradients we can query. This mode of access to f is natural in the scenarios in which such…
We consider the group of permutations of the vertices of a lattice. A random walk is generated by unit steps that each interchange two nearest neighbor vertices of the lattice. We study the heat equation on the permutation group, using the…
Hit-and-Run is known to be one of the best random sampling algorithms, its mixing time is polynomial in dimension. Nevertheless, in practice the number of steps required to achieve uniformly distributed samples is rather high. We propose…
Fix integers $d \geq 2$ and $k\geq d-1$. Consider a random walk $X_0, X_1, \ldots$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$ in which, given $X_0, X_1, \ldots, X_n$ ($n \geq k$), the next step $X_{n+1}$ is uniformly distributed on the unit ball centred at $X_n$,…
We present an efficient algorithm for uniformly sampling from an arbitrary compact body $\mathcal{X} \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ from a warm start under isoperimetry and a natural volume growth condition. Our result provides a substantial common…
Most approximation algorithms for #P-complete problems (e.g., evaluating the permanent of a matrix or the volume of a polytope) work by reduction to the problem of approximate sampling from a distribution $\pi$ over a large set $\S$. This…
We introduce a general class of random walks on the $N$-hypercube, study cut-off for the mixing time, and provide several types of representation for the transition probabilities. We observe that for a sub-class of these processes with long…
Recently, it has been shown that one-dimensional quantum walks can mix more quickly than classical random walks, suggesting that quantum Monte Carlo algorithms can outperform their classical counterparts. We study two quantum walks on the…