Related papers: Evaluation of Formal posterior distributions via M…
We consider evaluating improper priors in a formal Bayes setting according to the consequences of their use. Let $\Phi$ be a class of functions on the parameter space and consider estimating elements of $\Phi$ under quadratic loss. If the…
Consider a parametric statistical model $P(\mathrm{d}x|\theta)$ and an improper prior distribution $\nu(\mathrm{d}\theta)$ that together yield a (proper) formal posterior distribution $Q(\mathrm{d}\theta|x)$. The prior is called strongly…
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…
Hierarchical modeling is wonderful and here to stay, but hyperparameter priors are often chosen in a casual fashion. Unfortunately, as the number of hyperparameters grows, the effects of casual choices can multiply, leading to considerably…
When the state space of a discrete state space positive recurrent Markov chain is infinite or very large, it becomes necessary to truncate the state space in order to facilitate numerical computation of the stationary distribution. This…
This paper proposes a new type of recurrence where we divide the Markov chains into intervals that start when the chain enters into a subset A, then sample another subset B far away from A and end when the chain again return to A. The…
The theory of $L^2$-spectral gaps for reversible Markov chains has been studied by many authors. In this paper we consider positive recurrent general state space Markov chains with stationary transition probabilities. Replacing the…
Using Markov chain Monte Carlo to sample from posterior distributions was the key innovation which made Bayesian data analysis practical. Notoriously, however, MCMC is hard to tune, hard to diagnose, and hard to parallelize. This…
We study the approximation of a Markov chain on a reduced state space, for both discrete- and continuous-time Markov chains. In this context, we extend the existing theory of formal error bounds for the approximated transient distributions.…
We obtain the posterior distribution of a random process conditioned on observing the empirical frequencies of a finite sample path. We find under a rather broad assumption on the "dependence structure" of the process, {\em c.f.}…
Statistical models for multivariate data often include a semi-orthogonal matrix parameter. In many applications, there is reason to expect that the semi-orthogonal matrix parameter satisfies a structural assumption such as sparsity or…
In this work we establish the posterior consistency for a parametrized family of partially observed, fully dominated Markov models. As a main assumption, we suppose that the prior distribution assigns positive probability to all…
This paper is a survey of various proofs of the so called {\em fundamental theorem of Markov chains}: every ergodic Markov chain has a unique positive stationary distribution and the chain attains this distribution in the limit independent…
We define a conjugate prior for the reversible Markov chain of order $r$. The prior arises from a partially exchangeable reinforced random walk, in the same way that the Beta distribution arises from the exchangeable Poly\'{a} urn. An…
Markov chains are fundamental models for stochastic dynamics, with applications in a wide range of areas such as population dynamics, queueing systems, reinforcement learning, and Monte Carlo methods. Estimating the transition matrix and…
Markov chain analysis is a key technique in formal verification. A practical obstacle is that all probabilities in Markov models need to be known. However, system quantities such as failure rates or packet loss ratios, etc. are often not --…
The Rician distribution, a well-known statistical distribution frequently encountered in fields like magnetic resonance imaging and wireless communications, is particularly useful for describing many real phenomena such as signal process…
We consider Markov chains on partially ordered sets that generalize the success-runs and remaining life chains in reliability theory. We find conditions for recurrence and transience and give simple expressions for the invariant…
A classical problem for Markov chains is determining their stationary (or steady-state) distribution. This problem has an equally classical solution based on eigenvectors and linear equation systems. However, this approach does not scale to…
Estimation of parameters that obey specific constraints is crucial in statistics and machine learning; for example, when parameters are required to satisfy boundedness, monotonicity, or linear inequalities. Traditional approaches impose…