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Main Authors: Jiang, Bai, Sun, Qiang, Fan, Jianqing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2018
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.10721
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author Jiang, Bai
Sun, Qiang
Fan, Jianqing
author_facet Jiang, Bai
Sun, Qiang
Fan, Jianqing
contents We establish Bernstein's inequalities for functions of general (general-state-space and possibly non-reversible) Markov chains. These inequalities achieve sharp variance proxies and encompass the classical Bernstein inequality for independent random variables as special cases. The key analysis lies in bounding the operator norm of a perturbed Markov transition kernel by the exponential of sum of two convex functions. One coincides with what delivers the classical Bernstein inequality, and the other reflects the influence of the Markov dependence. A convex analysis on these two functions then derives our Bernstein inequalities. As applications, we apply our Bernstein inequalities to the Markov chain Monte Carlo integral estimation problem and the robust mean estimation problem with Markov-dependent samples, and achieve tight deviation bounds that previous inequalities can not.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_1805_10721
institution arXiv
publishDate 2018
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bernstein's inequalities for general Markov chains
Jiang, Bai
Sun, Qiang
Fan, Jianqing
Statistics Theory
We establish Bernstein's inequalities for functions of general (general-state-space and possibly non-reversible) Markov chains. These inequalities achieve sharp variance proxies and encompass the classical Bernstein inequality for independent random variables as special cases. The key analysis lies in bounding the operator norm of a perturbed Markov transition kernel by the exponential of sum of two convex functions. One coincides with what delivers the classical Bernstein inequality, and the other reflects the influence of the Markov dependence. A convex analysis on these two functions then derives our Bernstein inequalities. As applications, we apply our Bernstein inequalities to the Markov chain Monte Carlo integral estimation problem and the robust mean estimation problem with Markov-dependent samples, and achieve tight deviation bounds that previous inequalities can not.
title Bernstein's inequalities for general Markov chains
topic Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.10721