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We consider the problem of identity testing of Markov chain transition matrices based on a single trajectory of observations under the distance notion introduced by Daskalakis et al. [2018a] and further analyzed by Cherapanamjeri and…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-03-14 Sela Fried , Geoffrey Wolfer

We exhibit an efficient procedure for testing, based on a single long state sequence, whether an unknown Markov chain is identical to or $\varepsilon$-far from a given reference chain. We obtain nearly matching (up to logarithmic factors)…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-09-26 Geoffrey Wolfer , Aryeh Kontorovich

The embedding problem for Markov chains is a famous problem in probability theory and only partial results are available up till now. In this paper, we propose a variant of the embedding problem called the reversible embedding problem which…

Probability · Mathematics 2016-05-12 Chen Jia

We examine data-processing of Markov chains through the lens of information geometry. We first establish a theory of congruent Markov morphisms within the framework of stochastic matrices. Specifically, we introduce and justify the concept…

Probability · Mathematics 2023-12-21 Geoffrey Wolfer , Shun Watanabe

Classical distribution testing assumes access to i.i.d. samples from the distribution that is being tested. We initiate the study of Markov chain testing, assuming access to a single trajectory of a Markov Chain. In particular, we observe a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-12-05 Constantinos Daskalakis , Nishanth Dikkala , Nick Gravin

A spectral method for identifying lumping in large Markov chains is presented. Identification of meta stable states is treated as a special case. The method is based on spectral analysis of a self-adjoint matrix that is a function of the…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2010-02-19 Martin Nilsson Jacobi

Reversibility is a key property of Markov chains, central to algorithms such as Metropolis-Hastings and other MCMC methods. Yet many applications yield non-reversible chains, motivating the problem of approximating them by reversible ones…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-02-27 Stefano Cipolla , Fabio Durastante , Miryam Gnazzo , Beatrice Meini

Reversible Markov chains play a central role in stochastic modelling and in algorithms such as Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). Motivated by the fundamental importance of reversibility in classical settings, this paper develops a…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-10-28 Damjan Škulj

A lumping of a Markov chain is a coordinate-wise projection of the chain. We characterise the entropy rate preservation of a lumping of an aperiodic and irreducible Markov chain on a finite state space by the random growth rate of the…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2015-04-21 Bernhard C. Geiger , Christoph Temmel

Detecting broken time-reversibility at micro- and nanoscale is often difficult when experiments offer limited state resolution. We introduce a lumping method that builds an effective semi-Markov model able to reproduce exactly the full…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-12-16 Gianluca Teza , Attilio L. Stella , Trevor GrandPre

Parametric Markov chains (pMC) are used to model probabilistic systems with unknown or partially known probabilities. Although (universal) pMC verification for reachability properties is known to be coETR-complete, there have been efforts…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-04-29 Kasper Engelen , Guillermo A. Pérez , Shrisha Rao

This article studies the convergence properties of trans-dimensional MCMC algorithms when the total number of models is finite. It is shown that, for reversible and some non-reversible trans-dimensional Markov chains, under mild conditions,…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-10-18 Qian Qin

In this paper, we present reversibility preserving operations on Markov chain transition matrices. Simple row and column operations allow us to create new reversible transition matrices and yield an easy method for checking a Markov chain…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-06-28 Q. Jiang , M. Hlynka , P. H. Brill , C. H. Cheung

A common tool in the practice of Markov Chain Monte Carlo is to use approximating transition kernels to speed up computation when the desired kernel is slow to evaluate or intractable. A limited set of quantitative tools exist to assess the…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-01-14 Jeffrey Negrea , Jeffrey S. Rosenthal

This paper introduces a new simulation-based inference procedure to model and sample from multi-dimensional probability distributions given access to i.i.d.\ samples, circumventing the usual approaches of explicitly modeling the density…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-04-09 YoonHaeng Hur , Wenxuan Guo , Tengyuan Liang

It has been well known for some time that for strictly stationary Markov chains that are ``reversible'', that special symmetry provides special extra features in the mathematical theory. This paper here is primarily a purely expository…

Probability · Mathematics 2019-10-04 Richard C. Bradley

We obtain universal estimates on the convergence to equilibrium and the times of coupling for continuous time irreducible reversible finite-state Markov chains, both in the total variation and in the L^2 norms. The estimates in total…

Probability · Mathematics 2012-01-24 Mykhaylo Shkolnikov

If the state space of a homogeneous continuous-time Markov chain is too large, making inferences - here limited to determining marginal or limit expectations - becomes computationally infeasible. Fortunately, the state space of such a chain…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-06-01 Alexander Erreygers , Jasper De Bock

We survey information-theoretic approaches to the reduction of Markov chains. Our survey is structured in two parts: The first part considers Markov chain coarse graining, which focuses on projecting the Markov chain to a process on a…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2022-05-02 Bernhard C. Geiger

We study the problem of identity testing of markov chains. In this setting, we are given access to a single trajectory from a markov chain with unknown transition matrix $Q$ and the goal is to determine whether $Q = P$ for some known matrix…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-02-07 Yeshwanth Cherapanamjeri , Peter L. Bartlett
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