Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In statistics, maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is a method of estimating the parameters of an assumed probability distribution, given some observed data.This is achieved by maximizing a likelihood function so that, under the assumed statistical model, the observed data is most probable.
For example, a maximum-likelihood estimate is the point where the derivative of the likelihood function with respect to the parameter is zero; thus, a maximum-likelihood estimator is a critical point of the score function. [8] In many applications, such M-estimators can be thought of as estimating characteristics of the population.
In statistics, the method of estimating equations is a way of specifying how the parameters of a statistical model should be estimated.This can be thought of as a generalisation of many classical methods—the method of moments, least squares, and maximum likelihood—as well as some recent methods like M-estimators.
An example application of the method of moments is to estimate polynomial probability density distributions. In this case, an approximating polynomial of order is defined on an interval [,]. The method of moments then yields a system of equations, whose solution involves the inversion of a Hankel matrix. [2]
The EM iteration alternates between performing an expectation (E) step, which creates a function for the expectation of the log-likelihood evaluated using the current estimate for the parameters, and a maximization (M) step, which computes parameters maximizing the expected log-likelihood found on the E step. These parameter-estimates are then ...
Scoring algorithm, also known as Fisher's scoring, [1] is a form of Newton's method used in statistics to solve maximum likelihood equations numerically, named after Ronald Fisher. Sketch of derivation
When the parameters are estimated using the log-likelihood for the maximum likelihood estimation, each data point is used by being added to the total log-likelihood. As the data can be viewed as an evidence that support the estimated parameters, this process can be interpreted as "support from independent evidence adds", and the log-likelihood ...
When the first step is a maximum likelihood estimator, under some assumptions, two-step M-estimator is more asymptotically efficient (i.e. has smaller asymptotic variance) than M-estimator with known first-step parameter. Consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimator follows from the general result on two-step M-estimators. [4] Let {V i ...