Time Dependent Biased Random Walks

06/03/2020

∙

by   John Haslegrave, et al.

∙

0

∙

share

We study the biased random walk where at each step of a random walk a "controller" can, with a certain small probability, fix the next step. This model was introduced by Azar et al. [STOC1992]; we extend their work to the time dependent setting and consider cover times of this walk. We obtain new bounds on the cover and hitting times and make progress towards resolving a conjecture of Azar et al. on maximising values of the stationary distribution. We also consider the problem of computing an optimal strategy for the controller to minimise the cover time and show that for directed graphs determining the cover time is PSPACE-complete.