Algebraic and Analytic Approaches for Parameter Learning in Mixture Models

01/19/2020
by   Akshay Krishnamurthy, et al.
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We present two different approaches for parameter learning in several mixture models in one dimension. Our first approach uses complex-analytic methods and applies to Gaussian mixtures with shared variance, binomial mixtures with shared success probability, and Poisson mixtures, among others. An example result is that (O(N^1/3)) samples suffice to exactly learn a mixture of k<N Poisson distributions, each with integral rate parameters bounded by N. Our second approach uses algebraic and combinatorial tools and applies to binomial mixtures with shared trial parameter N and differing success parameters, as well as to mixtures of geometric distributions. Again, as an example, for binomial mixtures with k components and success parameters discretized to resolution ϵ, O(k^2(N/ϵ)^8/√(ϵ)) samples suffice to exactly recover the parameters. For some of these distributions, our results represent the first guarantees for parameter estimation.

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