We consider Glauber dynamics on finite spin systems.
The mixing time of Glauber dynamics can be bounded
in terms of the influences of sites on each other.
We consider three parameters bounding these influences ---
$\alpha$, the total influence on a site, as studied by Dobrushin;
$\alpha'$, the total influence ...
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We present a fully-polynomial randomized approximation scheme
for computing the permanent of an arbitrary matrix
with non-negative entries.
