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- Title
- Maximum Likelihood Estimation of the Latent Class Model through Model Boundary Decomposition, Special Volume in honor of memory of S.E.Fienberg
- Creator
- Elizabeth S. Allman, Baños Cervantes, Hector, Evans, Robin, Hosten, Serkan, Kubjas, Kaie, Lemke, Daniel, Rhodes, John, Zwiernik, Piotr
- Date
- 2019, 2019-04-12
- Description
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The Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is routinely used for maximum likelihood estimation in latent class analysis. However, the EM...
Show moreThe Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is routinely used for maximum likelihood estimation in latent class analysis. However, the EM algorithm comes with no global guarantees of reaching the global optimum. We study the geometry of the latent class model in order to understand the behavior of the maximum likelihood estimator. In particular, we characterize the boundary stratification of the binary latent class model with a binary hidden variable. For small models, such as for three binary observed variables, we show that this stratification allows exact computation of the maximum likelihood estimator. In this case we use simulations to study the maximum likelihood estimation attraction basins of the various strata and performance of the EM algorithm. Our theoretical study is complemented with a careful analysis of the EM fixed point ideal which provides an alternative method of studying the boundary stratification and maximizing the likelihood function. In particular, we compute the minimal primes of this ideal in the case of a binary latent class model with a binary or ternary hidden random variable.
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- Journal of Algebraic Statistics
- Title
- Uncovering Proximity of Chromosome Territories using Classical Algebraic Statistics
- Creator
- Arsuaga, Javier, Heskia, Ido, Hosten, Serkan, Maskalevich, Tatiana
- Date
- 2015, 2015-11-09
- Description
-
Exchange type chromosome aberrations (ETCAs) are rearrangements of the genome that occur when chromosomes break and the resulting fragments...
Show moreExchange type chromosome aberrations (ETCAs) are rearrangements of the genome that occur when chromosomes break and the resulting fragments rejoin with fragments from other chromosomes or from other regions within the same chromosome. ETCAs are commonly observed in cancer cells and in cells exposed to radiation. The frequency of these chromosome rearrangements is correlated with their spatial proximity, therefore it can be used to infer the three dimensional organization of the genome. Extracting statistical significance of spatial proximity from cancer and radiation data has remained somewhat elusive because of the sparsity of the data. We here propose a new approach to study the three dimensional organization of the genome using algebraic statistics. We test our method on a published data set of irradiated human blood lymphocyte cells. We provide a rigorous method for testing the overall organization of the genome, and in agreement with previous results we find a random relative positioning of chromosomes with the exception of the chromosome pairs {1,22} and {13,14} that have a significantly larger number of ETCAs than the rest of the chromosome pairs suggesting their spatial proximity. We conclude that algebraic methods can successfully be used to analyze genetic data and have potential applications to larger and more complex data sets.
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- Journal of Algebraic Statistics