Papers › Markov Chain Monte Carlo Significance Tests
Markov Chain Monte Carlo Significance Tests
Michael Howes
The archive published only this paper's code-link row. Authors, date and abstract are from arXiv's metadata (CC0), read from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12 where its title matched the archive's; the title is the archive's.
Monte Carlo significance tests are a general tool that produce p-values by generating samples from the null distribution. However, Monte Carlo tests are limited to null hypothesis which we can exactly sample from. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) significance tests are a way to produce statistical valid p-values for null hypothesis we can only approximately sample from. These methods were first introduced by Besag and Clifford in 1989 and make no assumptions on the mixing time of the MCMC procedure. Here we review the two methods of Besag and Clifford and introduce a new method that unifies the existing procedures. We use simple examples to highlight the difference between MCMC significance tests and standard Monte Carlo tests based on exact sampling. We also survey a range of contemporary applications in the literature including goodness-of-fit testing for the Rasch model, tests for detecting gerrymandering [8] and a permutation based test of conditional independence [3].
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections