Mixing Times of Self-Organizing Lists and Biased Permutations

Sampling permutations from S_n is a fundamental problem from probability theory. The nearest neighbor transposition chain \cal{M}}_{nn} is known to converge in time Θ(n^3 \log n) in the uniform case and time Θ(n^2) in the constant bias case, in which we put adjacent elements in order with probability p \neq 1/2 and out of order with probability 1-p. Here we consider the variable bias case where we put adjacent elements x<y in order with probability p{x,y} and out of order with probability 1-p_{x,y}. The problem of bounding the mixing rate of M_{nn} was posed by Fill and was motivated by the Move-Ahead-One self-organizing list update algorithm. It was conjectured that the chain would always be rapidly mixing if 1/2 \leq p_{x,y} \leq 1 for all x < y, but this was only known in the case of constant bias or when p_{x,y} is equal to 1/2 or 1, a case that corresponds to sampling linear extensions of a partial order. We prove the chain is rapidly mixing for two classes: "Choose Your Weapon," where we are given r_1,..., r_{n-1} with r_i \geq 1/2 and p_{x,y}=r_x for all x<y (so the dominant player chooses the game, thus fixing his or her probability of winning), and "League Hierarchies," where there are two leagues and players from the A-league have a fixed probability of beating players from the B-league, players within each league are similarly divided into sub-leagues with a possibly different fixed probability, and so forth recursively. Both of these classes include permutations with constant bias as a special case. Moreover, we also prove that the most general conjecture is false by constructing a counterexample where 1/2 \leq p_{x,y} \leq 1 for all x< y, but for which the nearest neighbor transposition chain requires exponential time to converge.

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