Related papers: Maximum likelihood estimation in the sparse Rasch …

For a parametric model of distributions, the closest distribution in the model to the true distribution located outside the model is considered. Measuring the closeness between two distributions with the Kullback-Leibler (K-L) divergence,…

We estimate a general mixture of Markov jump processes. The key novel feature of the proposed mixture is that the transition intensity matrices of the Markov processes comprising the mixture are entirely unconstrained. The Markov processes…

In this paper we consider regression problems subject to arbitrary noise in the operator or design matrix. This characterization appropriately models many physical phenomena with uncertainty in the regressors. Although the problem has been…

This paper deals with Elliptical Wishart distributions - which generalize the Wishart distribution - in the context of signal processing and machine learning. Two algorithms to compute the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) are proposed: a…

Estimating model parameters is a crucial step in mathematical modelling and typically involves minimizing the disagreement between model predictions and experimental data. This calibration data can change throughout a study, particularly if…

Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) is the bread and butter of system inference for stochastic systems. In some generality, MLE will converge to the correct model in the infinite data limit. In the context of physical approaches to system…

The linear regression model with a random variable (RV) measurement matrix, where the mean of the random measurement matrix has full column rank, has been extensively studied. In particular, the quasiconvexity of the maximum likelihood…

The principle of maximum entropy is a broadly applicable technique for computing a distribution with the least amount of information possible constrained to match empirical data, for instance, feature expectations. We seek to generalize…

Finite mixture models are widely used in econometric analyses to capture unobserved heterogeneity. This paper shows that maximum likelihood estimation of finite mixtures of parametric densities can suffer from substantial finite-sample bias…

Speculative Decoding is a prominent technique for accelerating the autoregressive inference of large language models (LLMs) by employing a fast draft model to propose candidate token sequences and a large target model to verify them in…

Subsampling is a computationally effective approach to extract information from massive data sets when computing resources are limited. After a subsample is taken from the full data, most available methods use an inverse probability…

Structured Latent Attribute Models (SLAMs) are a family of discrete latent variable models widely used in education, psychology, and epidemiology to model multivariate categorical data. A SLAM assumes that multiple discrete latent…

In this paper, we propose two new algorithms for maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) of high dimensional sparse covariance matrices. Unlike most of the state of-the-art methods, which either use regularization techniques or penalize the…

Reinforcement learning is the method of choice to train models in sampling-based setups with binary outcome feedback, such as navigation, code generation, and mathematical problem solving. In such settings, models implicitly induce a…

Markovian population models are suitable abstractions to describe well-mixed interacting particle systems in situation where stochastic fluctuations are significant due to the involvement of low copy particles. In molecular biology,…

Multivariate Item Response Theory (MIRT) is sought-after widely by applied researchers looking for interpretable (sparse) explanations underlying response patterns in questionnaire data. There is, however, an unmet demand for such sparsity…

Maximum a posteriori (MAP) inference is a fundamental computational paradigm for statistical inference. In the setting of graphical models, MAP inference entails solving a combinatorial optimization problem to find the most likely…

We present novel bounds for estimating discrete probability distributions under the $\ell_\infty$ norm. These are nearly optimal in various precise senses, including a kind of instance-optimality. Our data-dependent convergence guarantees…

Motivated by studying asymptotic properties of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) in stochastic volatility (SV) models, in this paper we investigate likelihood estimation in state space models. We first prove, under some regularity…

Empirical risk minimization is the main tool for prediction problems, but its extension to relational data remains unsolved. We solve this problem using recent ideas from graph sampling theory to (i) define an empirical risk for relational…