Related papers: Kullback Proximal Algorithms for Maximum Likelihoo…
Triangular distributions are a well-known class of distributions that are often used as elementary example of a probability model. In the past, enumeration and order statistic-based methods have been suggested for the maximum likelihood…
Over the past decades, there has been a surge of interest in studying low-dimensional structures within high-dimensional data. Statistical factor models $-$ i.e., low-rank plus diagonal covariance structures $-$ offer a powerful framework…
We describe $k$-MLE, a fast and efficient local search algorithm for learning finite statistical mixtures of exponential families such as Gaussian mixture models. Mixture models are traditionally learned using the expectation-maximization…
We study the minimax estimation of $\alpha$-divergences between discrete distributions for integer $\alpha\ge 1$, which include the Kullback--Leibler divergence and the $\chi^2$-divergences as special examples. Dropping the usual…
We study the approximation of arbitrary distributions $P$ on $d$-dimensional space by distributions with log-concave density. Approximation means minimizing a Kullback--Leibler-type functional. We show that such an approximation exists if…
This paper introduces two new robust methods for estimation of parameters in a given parametric family. The first method is that of `minimum weighted L2', effectively minimising an estimate of the integrated (and possibly weighted) squared…
Classic Bayesian methods with complex models are frequently infeasible due to an intractable likelihood. Simulation-based inference methods, such as Approximate Bayesian Computing (ABC), calculate posteriors without accessing a likelihood…
As is the case for many curved exponential families, the computation of maximum likelihood estimates in a multivariate normal model with a Kronecker covariance structure is typically carried out with an iterative algorithm, specifically, a…
Maximum likelihood estimation is one of the most used methods in quantum state tomography, where the aim is to reconstruct the density matrix of a physical system from measurement results. One strategy to deal with positivity and unit trace…
We study a class of weakly identifiable location-scale mixture models for which the maximum likelihood estimates based on $n$ i.i.d. samples are known to have lower accuracy than the classical $n^{- \frac{1}{2}}$ error. We investigate…
This paper addresses the problem of approximating an unknown probability distribution with density $f$ -- which can only be evaluated up to an unknown scaling factor -- with the help of a sequential algorithm that produces at each iteration…
Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is a standard linear dimensionality reduction technique for nonnegative data sets. In order to measure the discrepancy between the input data and the low-rank approximation, the Kullback-Leibler (KL)…
We address the estimation problem for general finite mixture models, with a particular focus on the elliptical mixture models (EMMs). Compared to the widely adopted Kullback-Leibler divergence, we show that the Wasserstein distance provides…
The computation of the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator for heteroscedastic regression models is considered. The traditional Newton algorithms for the problem require matrix multiplications and inversions, which are bottlenecks in modern…
We develop a family of accelerated stochastic algorithms that minimize sums of convex functions. Our algorithms improve upon the fastest running time for empirical risk minimization (ERM), and in particular linear least-squares regression,…
The Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm is of key importance for inference in latent variable models including mixture of regressors and experts, missing observations. This paper introduces a novel EM algorithm, called…
Information-theoretic measures such as the entropy, cross-entropy and the Kullback-Leibler divergence between two mixture models is a core primitive in many signal processing tasks. Since the Kullback-Leibler divergence of mixtures provably…
A new maximum approximate likelihood (ML) estimation algorithm for the mixture of Kent distribution is proposed. The new algorithm is constructed via the BSLM (block successive lower-bound maximization) framework and incorporates manifold…
Ellipsoid fitting is of general interest in machine vision, such as object detection and shape approximation. Most existing approaches rely on the least-squares fitting of quadrics, minimizing the algebraic or geometric distances, with…
Pel-recursive motion estimation isa well-established approach. However, in the presence of noise, it becomes an ill-posed problem that requires regularization. In this paper, motion vectors are estimated in an iterative fashion by means of…