English

Maximum Likelihood for Matrices with Rank Constraints

Algebraic Geometry 2013-03-19 v2 Optimization and Control Computation

Abstract

Maximum likelihood estimation is a fundamental optimization problem in statistics. We study this problem on manifolds of matrices with bounded rank. These represent mixtures of distributions of two independent discrete random variables. We determine the maximum likelihood degree for a range of determinantal varieties, and we apply numerical algebraic geometry to compute all critical points of their likelihood functions. This led to the discovery of maximum likelihood duality between matrices of complementary ranks, a result proved subsequently by Draisma and Rodriguez.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1210.0198,
  title  = {Maximum Likelihood for Matrices with Rank Constraints},
  author = {Jonathan Hauenstein and Jose Rodriguez and Bernd Sturmfels},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1210.0198},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

22 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-21T22:13:30.191Z