Approximating conditional distributions

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the basic ideas of a general procedure to adapt the Stein-Chen method to bound the distance between conditional distributions. From an integration-by-parts formula (IBPF), we derive a Stein operator whose solution can be bounded, for example, via ad hoc couplings. This method provides quantitative bounds in several examples: the filtering equation, the distance between bridges of random walks and the distance between bridges and discrete schemes approximating them. Moreover, through the coupling construction for a certain class of random walk bridges we determine samplers, whose convergence to equilibrium is computed explicitly.