Related papers: A Proximal Point Algorithm for Minimum Divergence …
Finite mixture models have been widely used for the modelling and analysis of data from heterogeneous populations. Maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters is typically carried out via the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm. The…
We consider a minimization problem of the form $P(\varphi, g, h):$ $$\min\left\{f(x):= \varphi(x) + g(x) - h(x) \colon x \in \mathbb{R}^n\right\},$$ where $\varphi$ is a differentiable function and $g,$ $h$ are convex functions, and…
A line of recent work has analyzed the behavior of the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm in the well-specified setting, in which the population likelihood is locally strongly concave around its maximizing argument. Examples include…
Discriminative latent-variable models are typically learned using EM or gradient-based optimization, which suffer from local optima. In this paper, we develop a new computationally efficient and provably consistent estimator for a mixture…
The aim of this paper is to study different estimation procedures based on $\varphi-$divergences. The dual representation of $\varphi-$divergences based on the Fenchel-Legendre duality is the main interest of this study. It provides a way…
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…
Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) are fundamental statistical tools for modeling heterogeneous data. Due to the nonconcavity of the likelihood function, the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is widely used for parameter estimation of…
Random graph mixture models are now very popular for modeling real data networks. In these setups, parameter estimation procedures usually rely on variational approximations, either combined with the expectation-maximisation (\textsc{em})…
The Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is a widely used method for maximum likelihood estimation in models with latent variables. For estimating mixtures of Gaussians, its iteration can be viewed as a soft version of the k-means…
Latent class model (LCM), which is a finite mixture of different categorical distributions, is one of the most widely used models in statistics and machine learning fields. Because of its non-continuous nature and the flexibility in shape,…
Expectation Maximization (EM) is among the most popular algorithms for estimating parameters of statistical models. However, EM, which is an iterative algorithm based on the maximum likelihood principle, is generally only guaranteed to find…
Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is a widely used iterative algorithm for computing maximum likelihood estimate when dealing with Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM). When the sample size is smaller than the data dimension, this could lead…
We revisit the classical problem of estimating an unknown distribution from its samples by fitting a mixture model that minimizes cross-entropy loss. Framing the task as a stochastic convex optimization problem over the space of $ M…
We consider a symmetric mixture of linear regressions with random samples from the pairwise comparison design, which can be seen as a noisy version of a type of Euclidean distance geometry problem. We analyze the expectation-maximization…
Finite mixture models are powerful tools for modelling and analyzing heterogeneous data. Parameter estimation is typically carried out using maximum likelihood estimation via the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm. Recently, the…
Problems of probabilistic inference and decision making under uncertainty commonly involve continuous random variables. Often these are discretized to a few points, to simplify assessments and computations. An alternative approximation is…
(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…
Randomized neural networks (NNs) are an interesting alternative to conventional NNs that are more used for data modeling. The random vector functional-link (RVFL) network is an established and theoretically well-grounded randomized learning…
(Gradient) Expectation Maximization (EM) is a widely used algorithm for estimating the maximum likelihood of mixture models or incomplete data problems. A major challenge facing this popular technique is how to effectively preserve the…
Mixture models of Plackett-Luce (PL) -- one of the most fundamental ranking models -- are an active research area of both theoretical and practical significance. Most previously proposed parameter estimation algorithms instantiate the EM…