Chernoff-Hoeffding Bounds for Markov Chains: Generalized and Simplified

摘要

We prove the first Chernoff-Hoeffding bounds for general nonreversible finite-state Markov chains based on the standard L_1 (variation distance) mixing-time of the chain. Specifically, consider an ergodic Markov chain M and a weight function f: [n] -> [0,