Sampling Random Colorings of Sparse Random Graphs

We study the mixing properties of the single-site Markov chain known as the Glauber dynamics for sampling $k$-colorings of a sparse random graph $G(n,d/n)$ for constant $d$. The best known rapid mixing results for general graphs are in terms of the maximum degree $\Delta$ of the input graph $G$ and hold when $k>11\Delta/6$ for all $G$. Improved results hold when $k>\alpha\Delta$ for graphs with girth $\geq 5$ and $\Delta$ sufficiently large where $\alpha\approx 1.7632\ldots$ is the root of $\alpha=\exp(1/\alpha)$; further improvements on the constant $\alpha$ hold with stronger girth and maximum degree assumptions. For sparse random graphs the maximum degree is a function of $n$ and the goal is to obtain results in terms of the expected degree $d$. The following rapid mixing results for $G(n,d/n)$ hold with high probability over the choice of the random graph for sufficiently large constant~$d$. Mossel and Sly (2009) proved rapid mixing for constant $k$, and Efthymiou (2014) improved this to $k$ linear in~$d$. The condition was improved to $k>3d$ by Yin and Zhang (2016) using non-MCMC methods. Here we prove rapid mixing when $k>\alpha d$ where $\alpha\approx 1.7632\ldots$ is the same constant as above. Moreover we obtain $O(n^{3})$ mixing time of the Glauber dynamics, while in previous rapid mixing results the exponent was an increasing function in $d$. As in previous results for random graphs our proof analyzes an appropriately defined block dynamics to "hide" high-degree vertices. One new aspect in our improved approach is utilizing so-called local uniformity properties for the analysis of block dynamics. To analyze the "burn-in" phase we prove a concentration inequality for the number of disagreements propagating in large blocks

Optimal random sampling designs in random field sampling

A Horvitz-Thompson predictor is proposed for spatial sampling when the characteristic of interest is modeled as a random field. Optimal sampling designs are deduced under this context. Fixed and variable sample size are considered

OPTIMAL RANDOM SAMPLING DESIGNS IN RANDOM FIELD SAMPLING

A Horvitz-Thompson predictor is proposed for spatial sampling when the characteristic of interest is modeled as a random field. Optimal sampling designs are deduced under this context. Fixed and variable sample size are considered.

Parallel Weighted Random Sampling

Data structures for efficient sampling from a set of weighted items are an important building block of many applications. However, few parallel solutions are known. We close many of these gaps both for shared-memory and distributed-memory machines. We give efficient, fast, and practicable algorithms for sampling single items, k items with/without replacement, permutations, subsets, and reservoirs. We also give improved sequential algorithms for alias table construction and for sampling with replacement. Experiments on shared-memory parallel machines with up to 158 threads show near linear speedups both for construction and queries

Densities for random balanced sampling

A random balanced sample (RBS) is a multivariate distribution with n components X_1,...,X_n, each uniformly distributed on [-1, 1], such that the sum of these components is precisely 0. The corresponding vectors X lie in an (n-1)-dimensional polytope M(n). We present new methods for the construction of such RBS via densities over M(n) and these apply for arbitrary n. While simple densities had been known previously for small values of n (namely 2,3 and 4), for larger n the known distributions with large support were fractal distributions (with fractal dimension asymptotic to n as n approaches infinity). Applications of RBS distributions include sampling with antithetic coupling to reduce variance, and the isolation of nonlinearities. We also show that the previously known densities (for n<5) are in fact the only solutions in a natural and very large class of potential RBS densities. This finding clarifies the need for new methods, such as those presented here.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Journal of Multivariate Analysi