English

Analysis of a Generalized Expectation-Maximization Algorithm for Gaussian Mixture Models: A Control Systems Perspective

Optimization and Control 2021-05-19 v4 Machine Learning Systems and Control Dynamical Systems Machine Learning

Abstract

The Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is one of the most popular methods used to solve the problem of parametric distribution-based clustering in unsupervised learning. In this paper, we propose to analyze a generalized EM (GEM) algorithm in the context of Gaussian mixture models, where the maximization step in the EM is replaced by an increasing step. We show that this GEM algorithm can be understood as a linear time-invariant (LTI) system with a feedback nonlinearity. Therefore, we explore some of its convergence properties by leveraging tools from robust control theory. Lastly, we explain how the proposed GEM can be designed, and present a pedagogical example to understand the advantages of the proposed approach.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1903.00979,
  title  = {Analysis of a Generalized Expectation-Maximization Algorithm for Gaussian Mixture Models: A Control Systems Perspective},
  author = {Sarthak Chatterjee and Orlando Romero and Sérgio Pequito},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.00979},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

17 pages, 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:56:53.430Z