Related papers: Existence of maximum likelihood estimates in expon…
Designing reliable networks consists in finding topological structures, which are able to successfully carry out desired processes and operations. When this set of activities performed within a network are unknown and the only available…
The growing availability of network data and of scientific interest in distributed systems has led to the rapid development of statistical models of network structure. Typically, however, these are models for the entire network, while the…
We characterize the existence of the maximum likelihood estimator for discrete exponential families. Our criterion is simple to apply as we show in various settings, most notably for exponential models of random graphs. As an application,…
This article discusses the problem of determining whether a given point, or set of points, lies within the convex hull of another set of points in $d$ dimensions. This problem arises naturally in a statistical context when using a…
The maximum likelihood threshold of a graph is the smallest number of data points that guarantees that maximum likelihood estimates exist almost surely in the Gaussian graphical model associated to the graph. We show that this graph…
We study maximum likelihood estimation in Gaussian graphical models from a geometric point of view. An algebraic elimination criterion allows us to find exact lower bounds on the number of observations needed to ensure that the maximum…
The maximum likelihood threshold (MLT) of a graph $G$ is the minimum number of samples to almost surely guarantee existence of the maximum likelihood estimate in the corresponding Gaussian graphical model. We give a new characterization of…
Graphical models with bi-directed edges (<->) represent marginal independence: the absence of an edge between two vertices indicates that the corresponding variables are marginally independent. In this paper, we consider maximum likelihood…
We study the problem of maximum likelihood estimation of densities that are log-concave and lie in the graphical model corresponding to a given undirected graph $G$. We show that the maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) is the product of the…
We study maximum likelihood estimation in log-linear models under conditional Poisson sampling schemes. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for existence of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of the model parameters and…
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…
We study maximum likelihood estimation for the statistical model for undirected random graphs, known as the $\beta$-model, in which the degree sequences are minimal sufficient statistics. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions, based…
We revisit the problem of the existence of the maximum likelihood estimate for multi-class logistic regression. We show that one method of ensuring its existence is by assigning positive probability to every class in the sample dataset. The…
With the growth of interest in network data across fields, the Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM) has emerged as the leading approach to the statistical analysis of network data. ERGM parameter estimation requires the approximation of an…
Exponential-family Random Graph Models (ERGMs) constitute a large statistical framework for modeling sparse and dense random graphs, short- and long-tailed degree distributions, covariates, and a wide range of complex dependencies. Special…
A very popular class of models for networks posits that each node is represented by a point in a continuous latent space, and that the probability of an edge between nodes is a decreasing function of the distance between them in this latent…
Exponential random graph models (ERGMs) are a widely used framework for network data, enabling hypothesis testing on the structural mechanisms underlying observed networks. Bayesian ERGMs provide principled uncertainty quantification and…
Motivated by recent works on the high-dimensional logistic regression, we establish that the existence of the maximum likelihood estimate exhibits a phase transition for a wide range of generalized linear models with binary outcome and…
We provide a polyhedral description of the conditions for the existence of the maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) for a hierarchical log-linear model. The MLE exists if and only if the observed margins lie in the relative interior of the…
In this paper, we study sample size thresholds for maximum likelihood estimation for tensor normal models. Given the model parameters and the number of samples, we determine whether, almost surely, (1) the likelihood function is bounded…