Hahn polynomials and the Burnside process

We study a natural Markov chain on $\{0,1,\cdots,n\}$ with eigenvectors the Hahn polynomials. This explicit diagonalization makes it possible to get sharp rates of convergence to stationarity. The process, the Burnside process, is a special case of the celebrated `Swendsen-Wang' or `data augmentation' algorithm. The description involves the beta-binomial distribution and Mallows model on permutations. It introduces a useful generalization of the Burnside process.

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