Related papers: On the Behrens--Fisher problem: A globally converg…
Gaussian mixture models form a flexible and expressive parametric family of distributions that has found applications in a wide variety of applications. Unfortunately, fitting these models to data is a notoriously hard problem from a…
We study the problem of likelihood maximization when the likelihood function is intractable but model simulations are readily available. We propose a sequential, gradient-based optimization method that directly models the Fisher score based…
We introduce a probabilistic approach to the LMS filter. By means of an efficient approximation, this approach provides an adaptable step-size LMS algorithm together with a measure of uncertainty about the estimation. In addition, the…
The Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is a flexible iterative procedure used to solve non-linear least squares problems. In this work we study how a class of possible adaptations of this procedure can be used to solve maximum likelihood…
We explore computational aspects of maximum likelihood estimation of the mixture proportions of a nonparametric finite mixture model -- a convex optimization problem with old roots in statistics and a key member of the modern data analysis…
We study probability density functions that are log-concave. Despite the space of all such densities being infinite-dimensional, the maximum likelihood estimate is the exponential of a piecewise linear function determined by finitely many…
Variable selection is one of the most important tasks in statistics and machine learning. To incorporate more prior information about the regression coefficients, the constrained Lasso model has been proposed in the literature. In this…
A relativistic generalization of the inviscid Burgers equation was proposed by LeFloch, Makhlof, and Okutmustur and then investigated on a Schwarzschild background. Here, we extend their analysis to a Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker…
Poisson likelihood models have been prevalently used in imaging, social networks, and time series analysis. We propose fast, simple, theoretically-grounded, and versatile, optimization algorithms for Poisson likelihood modeling. The Poisson…
Latent Gaussian models (LGMs) are widely used in statistics and machine learning. Bayesian inference in non-conjugate LGMs is difficult due to intractable integrals involving the Gaussian prior and non-conjugate likelihoods. Algorithms…
We provide two fundamental results on the population (infinite-sample) likelihood function of Gaussian mixture models with $M \geq 3$ components. Our first main result shows that the population likelihood function has bad local maxima even…
The F-measure, which has originally been introduced in information retrieval, is nowadays routinely used as a performance metric for problems such as binary classification, multi-label classification, and structured output prediction.…
(Neal and Hinton, 1998) recast maximum likelihood estimation of any given latent variable model as the minimization of a free energy functional $F$, and the EM algorithm as coordinate descent applied to $F$. Here, we explore alternative…
In this article we provide initial findings regarding the problem of solving likelihood equations by means of a maximum entropy approach. Unlike standard procedures that require equating at zero the score function of the maximum-likelihood…
This paper analyzes the convergence rates of the {\it Frank-Wolfe } method for solving convex constrained multiobjective optimization. We establish improved convergence rates under different assumptions on the objective function, the…
Variable selection is an old and pervasive problem in regression analysis. One solution is to impose a lasso penalty to shrink parameter estimates toward zero and perform continuous model selection. The lasso-penalized mixture of linear…
The Bradley-Terry model is a popular approach to describe probabilities of the possible outcomes when elements of a set are repeatedly compared with one another in pairs. It has found many applications including animal behaviour, chess…
For latent class models where the class weights depend on individual covariates, we derive a simple expression for computing the score vector and a convenient hybrid between the observed and the expected information matrices which is always…
In stochastic optimization, the population risk is generally approximated by the empirical risk. However, in the large-scale setting, minimization of the empirical risk may be computationally restrictive. In this paper, we design an…
In several interesting applications one is faced with the problem of simultaneous binary hypothesis testing and parameter estimation. Although such joint problems are not infrequent, there exist no systematic analysis in the literature that…