Stationarity, here, refers to the limiting distribution in a Markov
chain. A series of samples from a Markov chain, in which each sample
is the result of an iteration of a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)
algorithm, is analyzed for stationarity, meaning whether or not the
samples trend or its moments change across iterations. A stationary
posterior distribution is an equilibrium distribution, and assessing
stationarity is an important diagnostic toward inferring Markov chain
convergence.
In the cases of a matrix or an object of class demonoid
, all
Markov chains (as column vectors) must be stationary for
is.stationary
to return TRUE
.
Alternative ways to assess stationarity of chains are to use the
BMK.Diagnostic
or Heidelberger.Diagnostic
functions.