Rates of Convergence for Gibbs Sampling for Variance Component Models

Abstract

his paper analyzes the Gibbs sampler applied to a standard variance component model, and considers the question of how many iterations are required for convergence. It is proved that for K location parameters, with J observations each, the number of iterations required for convergence (for large K and J) is a constant times (1 + log K/log J). This is one of the first rigorous, a priori results about time to convergence for the Gibbs sampler. A quantitative version of the theory of Harris recurrence (for Markov chains) is developed and applied.