Explicit error bounds for Markov chain Monte Carlo
Abstract
We prove explicit, i.e. non-asymptotic, error bounds for Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. The problem is to compute the expectation of a function f with respect to a measure {\pi}. Different convergence properties of Markov chains imply different error bounds. For uniformly ergodic and reversible Markov chains we prove a lower and an upper error bound with respect to the L2 -norm of f . If there exists an L2 -spectral gap, which is a weaker convergence property than uniform ergodicity, then we show an upper error bound with respect to the Lp -norm of f for p > 2. Usually a burn-in period is an efficient way to tune the algorithm. We provide and justify a recipe how to choose the burn-in period. The error bounds are applied to the problem of the integration with respect to a possibly unnormalized density. More precise, we consider the integration with respect to log-concave densities and the integration over convex bodies. By the use of the Metropolis algorithm based on a ball walk and the hit-and-run algorithm it is shown that both problems are polynomial tractable.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1108.3201,
title = {Explicit error bounds for Markov chain Monte Carlo},
author = {Daniel Rudolf},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1108.3201},
year = {2020}
}