Maximum Likelihood Estimates for Gaussian Mixtures Are Transcendental

DOI10.1007/978-3-319-32859-1_49MaRDI QIDQ2807877zbMATHOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Mathias Drton, Bernd Sturmfels, Carlos Enrique Améndola Cerón

Publication date 25 May 2016

Published in Mathematical Aspects of Computer and Information Sciences (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.06958

zbMATH Keywords

expectation maximizationmaximum likelihoodmixture modelnormal distributionalgebraic statisticstranscendence theory

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Point estimation (62F10) Learning and adaptive systems in artificial intelligence (68T05) Estimation in multivariate analysis (62H12)

Abstract: Gaussian mixture models are central to classical statistics, widely used in the information sciences, and have a rich mathematical structure. We examine their maximum likelihood estimates through the lens of algebraic statistics. The MLE is not an algebraic function of the data, so there is no notion of ML degree for these models. The critical points of the likelihood function are transcendental, and there is no bound on their number, even for mixtures of two univariate Gaussians.

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Cited in

(4)

• Identifying the number of components in Gaussian mixture models using numerical algebraic geometry
• Injectivity of real rational mappings: the case of a mixture of two Gaussian laws
• Maximum number of modes of Gaussian mixtures
• Exact solutions in log-concave maximum likelihood estimation

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Uses Software

• mclust

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