Stationarity, here, refers to the limiting distribution in a Markov
chain. A series of samples from a Markov chain, in which each sample
is the result of an iteration of a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)
algorithm, is analyzed for stationarity, meaning whether or not the
samples trend or its moments change across iterations. A stationary
posterior distribution is an equilibrium distribution, and assessing
stationarity is an important diagnostic toward inferring Markov chain
convergence.
In the cases of a matrix or an object of class demonoid, all
Markov chains (as column vectors) must be stationary for
is.stationary to return TRUE.
Alternative ways to assess stationarity of chains are to use the
BMK.Diagnostic or Heidelberger.Diagnostic
functions.