Simulated annealing algorithms and Markov chains with rare transitions
We present new M-estimators of the mean and variance of real valued random variables, based on PAC-Bayes bounds. We analyze the non-asymptotic minimax properties of the deviations of those estimators for sample distributions having either a bounded variance or a bounded variance and a bounded kurtosis. Under those weak hypotheses, allowing for heavy-tailed distributions, we show that the worst case deviations of the empirical mean are suboptimal. We prove indeed that for any confidence level, there...
We study the exit path from a general domain after the last visit to a set of a Markov chain with rare transitions. We prove several large deviation principles for the law of the succession of the cycles visited by the process (the cycle path), the succession of the saddle points gone through to jump from cycle to cycle on the cycle path (the saddle path) and the succession of all the points gone through (the exit path). We estimate the time the process spends in each cycle of the cycle path...
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