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Among Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, coupling from the past is a method for sampling from the stationary distribution of a Markov chain. Contrary to many MCMC algorithms, coupling from the past gives in principle a perfect sample from the stationary distribution. It was invented by James Propp and David Wilson in 1996. ==The basic idea== Consider a finite state irreducible aperiodic Markov chain with state space and (unique) stationary distribution ( is a probability vector). Suppose that we come up with a probability distribution on the set of maps with the property that for every fixed , its image is distributed according to the transition probability of from state . An example of such a probability distribution is the one where is independent from whenever , but it is often worthwhile to consider other distributions. Now let for be independent samples from . Suppose that is chosen randomly according to and is independent from the sequence . (We do not worry for now where this is coming from.) Then is also distributed according to , because is -stationary and our assumption on the law of . Define : Then it follows by induction that is also distributed according to for every . Now here is the main point. It may happen that for some the image of the map is a single element of . In other words, for each . Therefore, we do not need to have access to in order to compute . The algorithm then involves finding some such that is a singleton, and outputing the element of that singleton. The design of a good distribution for which the task of finding such an and computing is not too costly is not always obvious, but has been accomplished successfully in several important instances. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Coupling from the past」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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