The three-state toric homogeneous Markov chain model has Markov degree two (Q480695)

This paper concerns algebraic statistics and toric ideals. Markov basis are minimal generating sets of toric ideals, it is known from [\textit{P. Diaconis} and \textit{B. Sturmfels}, Ann. Stat. 26, No. 1, 363--397 (1998; Zbl 0952.62088)] that the Markov basis can be used in optimization or in statistics. The main result of this paper is that the three-state toric homogeneous Markov chain model has Markov degree two. In order to be more precise, let \(S,T\) be positive integer numbers, and let \(R_{S,T}\) denote the polynomial ring over a field \(K\) on the set of variables \(\{x_{i_1\ldots i_T} | 1\leq i_j\leq S \;\forall j \;\text{ and } i_j\not= i_{j+1}\}\). The \(S-\)state toric homogeneous Markov \(T-\)chain ideal \(I_{S,T}\) is the kernel of the homomorphism: \(\phi_{S,T}: R_{S,T}\longrightarrow R_{S,2}\) defined by \(\phi_{S,T}(x_{i_1\ldots i_T} )=x_{i_1 i_2} x_{i_2 i_3}\ldots x_{i_{T-1} i_T}\). In this paper, the author proves that if \(S=3, T\geq 3\) the ideal \(I_{3,T}\) is generated by quadratic binomials.