Markov chain

High school (ages 12+)
Mathematics & Numbers

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Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/markov-chain

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the related concepts?Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), continuous-time Markov chains, and higher-order Markov chains
2. Why is a Markov chain called "memoryless"?It is called "memoryless" because the chance of the next state depends only on the current state, not on any earlier states.
3. How did Andrey Markov discover Markov chains?Markov studied the letters in a Russian poem and noticed that the chance of a letter appearing was influenced by the letter before it. From this, he created the idea of a memoryless process.

Stochastic Process: A mathematical model describing a sequence of random variables indexed by time or space.
State Space: The set of all possible conditions or outcomes a Markov chain can occupy.
Transition Probability: The likelihood of moving from one specific state to another in a single time step.
Stationary Distribution: A probability distribution over states that remains constant over time for an ergodic Markov chain.