Inference in Ising models on dense regular graphs

Abstract

In this paper, we derive the limit of experiments for one parameter Ising models on dense regular graphs. In particular, we show that the limiting experiment is Gaussian in the low temperature regime, non Gaussian in the critical regime, and an infinite collection of Gaussians in the high temperature regime. We also derive the limiting distributions of the maximum likelihood and maximum pseudo-likelihood estimators, and study limiting power for tests of hypothesis against contiguous alternatives (whose scaling changes across the regimes). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt at establishing the classical limits of experiments for Ising models (and more generally, Markov random fields).