An asymptotic relationship between coupling methods for stochastically modeled population processes

DOI10.1093/IMANUM/DRU044MaRDI QIDQ3450689zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Masanori Koyama, David F. Anderson

Publication date 6 November 2015

Published in IMA Journal of Numerical Analysis (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.3127

zbMATH Keywords

biochemical networkcontinuous time Markov chain modelcouplingsrandom time changestochastic modelingstochastic simulation

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Applications of Markov chains and discrete-time Markov processes on general state spaces (social mobility, learning theory, industrial processes, etc.) (60J20) Computational methods in Markov chains (60J22) Population dynamics (general) (92D25)

Abstract: This paper is concerned with elucidating a relationship between two common coupling methods for the continuous time Markov chain models utilized in the cell biology literature. The couplings considered here are primarily used in a computational framework by providing reductions in variance for different Monte Carlo estimators, thereby allowing for significantly more accurate results for a fixed amount of computational time. Common applications of the couplings include the estimation of parametric sensitivities via finite difference methods and the estimation of expectations via multi-level Monte Carlo algorithms. While a number of coupling strategies have been proposed for the models considered here, and a number of articles have experimentally compared the different strategies, to date there has been no mathematical analysis describing the connections between them. Such analyses are critical in order to determine the best use for each. In the current paper, we show a connection between the common reaction path (CRP) method and the split coupling (SC) method, which is termed coupled finite differences (CFD) in the parametric sensitivities literature. In particular, we show that the two couplings are both limits of a third coupling strategy we call the "local-CRP" coupling, with the split coupling method arising as a key parameter goes to infinity, and the common reaction path coupling arising as the same parameter goes to zero. The analysis helps explain why the split coupling method often provides a lower variance than does the common reaction path method, a fact previously shown experimentally.

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(6)

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• Stochastic representations of ion channel kinetics and exact stochastic simulation of neuronal dynamics
• Low variance couplings for stochastic models of intracellular processes with time-dependent rate functions
• Coupling algorithms for calculating sensitivities of population balances
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1094079 (Why is no real title available?)
• Variance of finite difference methods for reaction networks with non-Lipschitz rate functions

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