Author

Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Natural Sciences

First Advisor

McDonald, Patrick

Area of Concentration

Mathematics and Physics

Abstract

The central topic of this thesis is the inverse problem for random walks on graphs, i.e. finding the transition probabilities of some Markov chain restricted to a rooted tree graph with known topology and a set of joint distributions of first hitting time and hitting place. It has already been shown by de la Peña et al. in the case where self-transitions are prohibited that the transition probabilities of such a Markov chain can be determined given these joint distributions on two ’boundary layers.’ This thesis proves that the problem can be solved for Markov chains allowing self-transitions, via an extension of de la Peña and via probability generating functions. The two methods are compared. Previous work on similar problems for more general graph structures and related topics in Electrical Impedance Tomography are also discussed.

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

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