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This paper considers cluster detection in Block Markov Chains (BMCs). These Markov chains are characterized by a block structure in their transition matrix. More precisely, the $n$ possible states are divided into a finite number of $K$…

Probability · Mathematics 2019-07-31 Jaron Sanders , Alexandre Proutière , Se-Young Yun

Markov chains are a natural and well understood tool for describing one-dimensional patterns in time or space. We show how to infer $k$-th order Markov chains, for arbitrary $k$, from finite data by applying Bayesian methods to both…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2009-11-13 Christopher C. Strelioff , James P. Crutchfield , Alfred W. Hubler

Markov chains provide a foundational framework for modeling sequential stochastic processes, with the transition probability matrix characterizing the dynamics of state evolution. While classical estimation methods such as maximum…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-07-11 Agamani Saha , Souvik Roy

This paper considers large families of Markov chains (MCs) that are defined over a set of parameters with finite discrete domains. Such families occur in software product lines, planning under partial observability, and sketching of…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2019-03-27 Milan Ceska , Nils Jansen , Sebastian Junges , Joost-Pieter Katoen

Motivated by techniques developed in recent progress on lower bounds for sublinear time algorithms (Behnezhad, Roghani and Rubinstein, STOC 2023, FOCS 2023, and STOC 2024) we introduce and study a new class of randomized algorithmic…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-03-19 Amir Azarmehr , Soheil Behnezhad , Alma Ghafari , Madhu Sudan

Despite its prevalence, probabilistic bisimilarity suffers from a lack of robustness under minuscule perturbations of the transition probabilities. This can lead to discontinuities in the probabilistic bisimilarity distance function,…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-05-22 Syyeda Zainab Fatmi , Stefan Kiefer , David Parker , Franck van Breugel

In this work, we study a natural nonparametric estimator of the transition probability matrices of a finite controlled Markov chain. We consider an offline setting with a fixed dataset, collected using a so-called logging policy. We develop…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-17 Imon Banerjee , Harsha Honnappa , Vinayak Rao

The problem of estimating an unknown discrete distribution from its samples is a fundamental tenet of statistical learning. Over the past decade, it attracted significant research effort and has been solved for a variety of divergence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-30 Yi Hao , Alon Orlitsky , Venkatadheeraj Pichapati

Markov population models (MPMs) are a widely used modelling formalism in the area of computational biology and related areas. The semantics of a MPM is an infinite-state continuous-time Markov chain. In this paper, we use the established…

Numerical Analysis · Computer Science 2014-06-10 David Spieler , Ernst Moritz Hahn , Lijun Zhang

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a flexible approach to approximate sampling from intractable probability distributions, with a rich theoretical foundation and comprising a wealth of exemplar algorithms. While the qualitative correctness…

Computation · Statistics 2025-11-27 Sam Power , Giorgos Vasdekis

Given its ability to analyse stochastic models ranging from discrete and continuous-time Markov chains to Markov decision processes and stochastic games, probabilistic model checking (PMC) is widely used to verify system dependability and…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-03-26 Radu Calinescu , Sinem Getir Yaman , Simos Gerasimou , Gricel Vázquez , Micah Bassett

Statistical machine learning often uses probabilistic algorithms, such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), to solve a wide range of problems. Many accelerators are proposed using specialized hardware to address sampling inefficiency, the…

Signal Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-03-09 Xiangyu Zhang , Sayan Mukherjee , Alvin R. Lebeck

We present a general framework for applying learning algorithms and heuristical guidance to the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of our techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive…

This paper introduces new efficient algorithms for two problems: sampling conditional on vertex degrees in unweighted graphs, and sampling conditional on vertex strengths in weighted graphs. The algorithms can sample conditional on the…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-09-19 James Scott , Axel Gandy

We investigate the statistical complexity of estimating the parameters of a discrete-state Markov chain kernel from a single long sequence of state observations. In the finite case, we characterize (modulo logarithmic factors) the minimax…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-08-14 Geoffrey Wolfer , Aryeh Kontorovich

Inference for continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) becomes challenging when the process is only observed at discrete time points. The exact likelihood is intractable, and existing methods often struggle even in medium-dimensional…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-07-23 Tao Tang , Lachlan Astfalck , David Dunson

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques are now widely used for cosmological parameter estimation. Chains are generated to sample the posterior probability distribution obtained following the Bayesian approach. An important issue is how…

An important problem in the implementation of Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms is to determine the convergence time, or the number of iterations before the chain is close to stationarity. For many Markov chains used in practice this time…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2010-07-02 Nayantara Bhatnagar , Andrej Bogdanov , Elchanan Mossel

In networking applications, one often wishes to obtain estimates about the number of objects at different parts of the network (e.g., the number of cars at an intersection of a road network or the number of packets expected to reach a node…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2020-06-22 Harshal A. Chaudhari , Michael Mathioudakis , Evimaria Terzi

We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) in which the transition probabilities and rewards belong to an uncertainty set parametrized by a collection of random variables. The probability distributions for these random parameters are…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2020-02-26 Murat Cubuktepe , Nils Jansen , Sebastian Junges , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Ufuk Topcu