scholarly journals The Cover Time of Deterministic Random Walks

10.37236/439 ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Friedrich ◽  
Thomas Sauerwald

The rotor router model is a popular deterministic analogue of a random walk on a graph. Instead of moving to a random neighbor, the neighbors are served in a fixed order. We examine how quickly this "deterministic random walk" covers all vertices (or all edges). We present general techniques to derive upper bounds for the vertex and edge cover time and derive matching lower bounds for several important graph classes. Depending on the topology, the deterministic random walk can be asymptotically faster, slower or equally fast as the classic random walk. We also examine the short term behavior of deterministic random walks, that is, the time to visit a fixed small number of vertices or edges.

Author(s):  
Agelos Georgakopoulos ◽  
John Haslegrave ◽  
Thomas Sauerwald ◽  
John Sylvester

Abstract We apply the power-of-two-choices paradigm to a random walk on a graph: rather than moving to a uniform random neighbour at each step, a controller is allowed to choose from two independent uniform random neighbours. We prove that this allows the controller to significantly accelerate the hitting and cover times in several natural graph classes. In particular, we show that the cover time becomes linear in the number n of vertices on discrete tori and bounded degree trees, of order $${\mathcal O}(n\log \log n)$$ on bounded degree expanders, and of order $${\mathcal O}(n{(\log \log n)^2})$$ on the Erdős–Rényi random graph in a certain sparsely connected regime. We also consider the algorithmic question of computing an optimal strategy and prove a dichotomy in efficiency between computing strategies for hitting and cover times.


2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (01) ◽  
pp. 177-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. S. Chong ◽  
Richard Cowan ◽  
Lars Holst

A simple asymmetric random walk on the integers is stopped when its range is of a given length. When and where is it stopped? Analogous questions can be stated for a Brownian motion. Such problems are studied using results for the classical ruin problem, yielding results for the cover time and the range, both for asymmetric random walks and Brownian motion with drift.


2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAL ORENSHTEIN ◽  
IGOR SHINKAR

We study a discrete time self-interacting random process on graphs, which we call greedy random walk. The walker is located initially at some vertex. As time evolves, each vertex maintains the set of adjacent edges touching it that have not yet been crossed by the walker. At each step, the walker, being at some vertex, picks an adjacent edge among the edges that have not traversed thus far according to some (deterministic or randomized) rule. If all the adjacent edges have already been traversed, then an adjacent edge is chosen uniformly at random. After picking an edge the walker jumps along it to the neighbouring vertex. We show that the expected edge cover time of the greedy random walk is linear in the number of edges for certain natural families of graphs. Examples of such graphs include the complete graph, even degree expanders of logarithmic girth, and the hypercube graph. We also show that GRW is transient in$\mathbb{Z}^d$for alld≥ 3.


2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 123-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN DOERR ◽  
TOBIAS FRIEDRICH

Jim Propp's rotor–router model is a deterministic analogue of a random walk on a graph. Instead of distributing chips randomly, each vertex serves its neighbours in a fixed order. We analyse the difference between the Propp machine and random walk on the infinite two-dimensional grid. It is known that, apart from a technicality, independent of the starting configuration, at each time the number of chips on each vertex in the Propp model deviates from the expected number of chips in the random walk model by at most a constant. We show that this constant is approximately 7.8 if all vertices serve their neighbours in clockwise or order, and 7.3 otherwise. This result in particular shows that the order in which the neighbours are served makes a difference. Our analysis also reveals a number of further unexpected properties of the two-dimensional Propp machine.


10.37236/8327 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Johansson

We consider a random walk process on graphs introduced by Orenshtein and Shinkar (2014). At any time, the random walk moves from its current position along a previously unvisited edge chosen uniformly at random, if such an edge exists. Otherwise, it walks along a previously visited edge chosen uniformly at random. For the random $r$-regular graph, with $r$ a constant odd integer, we show that this random walk process has asymptotic vertex and edge cover times $\frac{1}{r-2}n\log n$ and $\frac{r}{2(r-2)}n\log n$, respectively, generalizing a result of Cooper, Frieze and the author (2018) from $r = 3$ to any odd $r\geqslant 3$. The leading term of the asymptotic vertex cover time is now known for all fixed $r\geqslant 3$, with Berenbrink, Cooper and Friedetzky (2015) having shown that $G_r$ has vertex cover time asymptotic to $\frac{rn}{2}$ when $r\geqslant 4$ is even.


2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (04) ◽  
pp. 779-802 ◽  
Author(s):  
KEQIN LI

We propose a model of dynamically evolving random networks and give an analytical result of the cover time of the simple random walk algorithm on a dynamic random symmetric planar point graph. Our dynamic network model considers random node distribution and random node mobility. We analyze the cover time of the parallel random walk algorithm on a complete network and show by numerical data that k parallel random walks reduce the cover time by almost a factor of k. We present simulation results for four random walk algorithms on random asymmetric planar point graphs. These algorithms include the simple random walk algorithm, the intelligent random walk algorithm, the parallel random walk algorithm, and the parallel intelligent random walk algorithm. Our random network model considers random node distribution and random battery transmission power. Performance measures include normalized cover time, probability distribution of the length of random walks, and load distribution.


2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. S. Chong ◽  
Richard Cowan ◽  
Lars Holst

A simple asymmetric random walk on the integers is stopped when its range is of a given length. When and where is it stopped? Analogous questions can be stated for a Brownian motion. Such problems are studied using results for the classical ruin problem, yielding results for the cover time and the range, both for asymmetric random walks and Brownian motion with drift.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-161
Author(s):  
Florian Bourgey ◽  
Stefano De Marco ◽  
Emmanuel Gobet ◽  
Alexandre Zhou

AbstractThe multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) method developed by M. B. Giles [Multilevel Monte Carlo path simulation, Oper. Res. 56 2008, 3, 607–617] has a natural application to the evaluation of nested expectations {\mathbb{E}[g(\mathbb{E}[f(X,Y)|X])]}, where {f,g} are functions and {(X,Y)} a couple of independent random variables. Apart from the pricing of American-type derivatives, such computations arise in a large variety of risk valuations (VaR or CVaR of a portfolio, CVA), and in the assessment of margin costs for centrally cleared portfolios. In this work, we focus on the computation of initial margin. We analyze the properties of corresponding MLMC estimators, for which we provide results of asymptotic optimality; at the technical level, we have to deal with limited regularity of the outer function g (which might fail to be everywhere differentiable). Parallel to this, we investigate upper and lower bounds for nested expectations as above, in the spirit of primal-dual algorithms for stochastic control problems.


Algorithms ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 164
Author(s):  
Tobias Rupp ◽  
Stefan Funke

We prove a Ω(n) lower bound on the query time for contraction hierarchies (CH) as well as hub labels, two popular speed-up techniques for shortest path routing. Our construction is based on a graph family not too far from subgraphs that occur in real-world road networks, in particular, it is planar and has a bounded degree. Additionally, we borrow ideas from our lower bound proof to come up with instance-based lower bounds for concrete road network instances of moderate size, reaching up to 96% of an upper bound given by a constructed CH. For a variant of our instance-based schema applied to some special graph classes, we can even show matching upper and lower bounds.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 1148
Author(s):  
Jewgeni H. Dshalalow ◽  
Ryan T. White

In a classical random walk model, a walker moves through a deterministic d-dimensional integer lattice in one step at a time, without drifting in any direction. In a more advanced setting, a walker randomly moves over a randomly configured (non equidistant) lattice jumping a random number of steps. In some further variants, there is a limited access walker’s moves. That is, the walker’s movements are not available in real time. Instead, the observations are limited to some random epochs resulting in a delayed information about the real-time position of the walker, its escape time, and location outside a bounded subset of the real space. In this case we target the virtual first passage (or escape) time. Thus, unlike standard random walk problems, rather than crossing the boundary, we deal with the walker’s escape location arbitrarily distant from the boundary. In this paper, we give a short historical background on random walk, discuss various directions in the development of random walk theory, and survey most of our results obtained in the last 25–30 years, including the very recent ones dated 2020–21. Among different applications of such random walks, we discuss stock markets, stochastic networks, games, and queueing.


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