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The maximum likelihood degree of a statistical model refers to the number of solutions, where the derivative of the log-likelihood function is zero, over the complex field. This paper examines the maximum likelihood degree of the parameter…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-02-10 Pooja Yadav , Tanuja Srivastava

Score matching is an alternative to maximum likelihood (ML) for estimating a probability distribution parametrized up to a constant of proportionality. By fitting the ''score'' of the distribution, it sidesteps the need to compute this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-06 Chirag Pabbaraju , Dhruv Rohatgi , Anish Sevekari , Holden Lee , Ankur Moitra , Andrej Risteski

The relationship between the Bayesian approach and the minimum description length approach is established. We sharpen and clarify the general modeling principles MDL and MML, abstracted as the ideal MDL principle and defined from Bayes's…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2007-07-16 Paul Vitanyi , Ming Li

In this note we prove the dual representation formula of the divergence between two distributions in a parametric model. Resulting estimators for the divergence as for the parameter are derived. These estimators do not make use of any…

Methodology · Statistics 2011-08-23 Michel Broniatowski

Generalized linear models (GLMs) are fundamental tools for statistical modeling, with maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) serving as the classical approach for parameter inference. While MLE performs well for canonical GLMs, it can become…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-03 Linglingzhi Zhu , Jonghyeok Lee , Yao Xie

In this paper we provide a new efficient algorithm for approximately computing the profile maximum likelihood (PML) distribution, a prominent quantity in symmetric property estimation. We provide an algorithm which matches the previous best…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-11-06 Nima Anari , Moses Charikar , Kirankumar Shiragur , Aaron Sidford

We consider the parameter estimation problem of a probabilistic generative model prescribed using a natural exponential family of distributions. For this problem, the typical maximum likelihood estimator usually overfits under limited…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-13 Viet Anh Nguyen , Xuhui Zhang , Jose Blanchet , Angelos Georghiou

With the multiallelic parent-independent mutation-drift model, the equilibrium proportions of alleles are known to be Dirichlet distributed. A special case is the biallelic model, in which the proportions are beta distributed. A sample…

Populations and Evolution · Quantitative Biology 2019-05-07 Claus Vogl , Lynette Caitlin Mikula

We give a thorough description of the asymptotic property of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of the skewness parameter of a Skew Brownian Motion (SBM). Thanks to recent results on the Central Limit Theorem of the rate of convergence…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-02-07 Antoine Lejay , Sara Mazzonetto

Unlike the commonly used parametric regression models such as mixed models, that can easily violate the required statistical assumptions and result in invalid statistical inference, target maximum likelihood estimation allows more realistic…

Applications · Statistics 2020-06-17 Chi Zhang , Jennifer Ahern , Mark J. van der Laan

In nonlinear deterministic parameter estimation, the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is unable to attain the Cramer-Rao lower bound at low and medium signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) due the threshold and ambiguity phenomena. In order to…

Applications · Statistics 2015-06-19 Achraf Mallat , Sinan Gezici , Davide Dardari , Christophe Craeye , Luc Vandendorpe

State-space models have been used in many applications, including econometrics, engineering, medical research, etc. The maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) of the static parameter of general state-space models is not straightforward because…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-02-04 Yuxiong Gao , Wentao Li , Rong Chen

The vanilla method in univariate extreme-value theory consists of fitting the three-parameter Generalized Extreme-Value (GEV) distribution to a sample of block maxima. Despite claims to the contrary, the asymptotic normality of the maximum…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2017-03-16 Axel Bücher , Johan Segers

We study multivariate Gaussian statistical models whose maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is a rational function of the observed data. We establish a one-to-one correspondence between such models and the solutions to a nonlinear…

Algebraic Geometry · Mathematics 2025-09-04 Carlos Améndola , Lukas Gustafsson , Kathlén Kohn , Orlando Marigliano , Anna Seigal

The aim of this note is to state a couple of general results about the properties of the penalized maximum likelihood estimators (pMLE) and of the posterior distribution for parametric models in a non-asymptotic setup and for possibly large…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-12-13 Vladimir Spokoiny

We study the Nonparametric Maximum Likelihood Estimator (NPMLE) for estimating Gaussian location mixture densities in $d$-dimensions from independent observations. Unlike usual likelihood-based methods for fitting mixtures, NPMLEs are based…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-07-09 Sujayam Saha , Adityanand Guntuboyina

Maximum likelihood estimation is a fundamental computational problem in statistics. In this note, we give a bound for the maximum likelihood degree of algebraic statistical models for discrete data. As usual, such models are identified with…

Algebraic Geometry · Mathematics 2015-04-20 Nero Budur , Botong Wang

Maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) of latent variable models is often recast as the minimization of a free energy functional over an extended space of parameters and probability distributions. This perspective was recently combined with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-05 Jen Ning Lim , Juan Kuntz , Samuel Power , Adam M. Johansen

Since its introduction, the skew-$t$ distribution has received much attention in the literature both for the study of theoretical properties and as a model for data fitting in empirical work. A major motivation for this interest is the high…

Computation · Statistics 2019-07-25 Adelchi Azzalini , Mahdi Salehi

The finite Gamma mixture model is often used to describe randomness in income data, insurance data, and data from other applications. The popular likelihood approach, however, does not work for this model because the likelihood function is…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-11-10 Mingxing He , Jiahua Chen