Majority dynamics on trees and the dynamic cavity method

Citation
Kanoria, Yashodhan et Montanari, Andrea, Majority dynamics on trees and the dynamic cavity method, Annals of applied probability , 21(5), 2011, pp. 1694-1748
ISSN journal
10505164
Volume
21
Issue
5
Year of publication
2011
Pages
1694 - 1748
Database
ACNP
SICI code
Abstract
A voter sits on each vertex of an infinite tree of degree k, and has to decide between two alternative opinions. At each time step, each voter switches to the opinion of the majority of her neighbors. We analyze this majority process when opinions are initialized to independent and identically distributed random variables. In particular, we bound the threshold value of the initial bias such that the process converges to consensus. In order to prove an upper bound, we characterize the process of a single node in the large k-limit. This approach is inspired by the theory of mean field spin-glass and can potentially be generalized to a wider class of models. We also derive a lower bound that is nontrivial for small, odd values of k.