Non-invariance of circular turning-angle distributions under sub-sampling

Let f(θ;λ1,,λn)f_\circ(\theta;\lambda_1,\ldots,\lambda_n) be a circular distribution, let f{r}f^{\{r\}}_\circ denote the turning-angle distribution obtained after sub-sampling every rr steps, and let Λ\Lambda be the step-length distribution. Non-invariance conjecture. There is no circular distribution f(θ;λ1,,λn)f_\circ(\theta;\lambda_1,\ldots,\lambda_n), other than the circular uniform distribution, such that

f{r}=f(θ;λ^1,,λ^n),f^{\{r\}}_\circ=f_\circ(\theta;\hat{\lambda}_1,\ldots,\hat{\lambda}_n),

where r2r\geq2 is an integer, regardless of the step-length distribution Λ\Lambda. This conjecture seeks a precise characterization of how sub-sampling changes turning-angle distributions in correlated random walks; the preceding results establish related effects for specific cases, while the general claim remains unresolved.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Joseph D. Bailey and Jessica Claridge, “Effect of sampling on the descriptive distributions of correlated random walks”, arXiv:2607.03186 (2026).

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