Latent semantic analysisLatent semantic analysis (LSA) is a technique in natural language processing, in particular distributional semantics, of analyzing relationships between a set of documents and the terms they contain by producing a set of concepts related to the documents and terms. LSA assumes that words that are close in meaning will occur in similar pieces of text (the distributional hypothesis).
Maximum likelihood estimationIn 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. The point in the parameter space that maximizes the likelihood function is called the maximum likelihood estimate. The logic of maximum likelihood is both intuitive and flexible, and as such the method has become a dominant means of statistical inference.
Probabilistic latent semantic analysisProbabilistic latent semantic analysis (PLSA), also known as probabilistic latent semantic indexing (PLSI, especially in information retrieval circles) is a statistical technique for the analysis of two-mode and co-occurrence data. In effect, one can derive a low-dimensional representation of the observed variables in terms of their affinity to certain hidden variables, just as in latent semantic analysis, from which PLSA evolved.
Mixture modelIn statistics, a mixture model is a probabilistic model for representing the presence of subpopulations within an overall population, without requiring that an observed data set should identify the sub-population to which an individual observation belongs. Formally a mixture model corresponds to the mixture distribution that represents the probability distribution of observations in the overall population.
Logistic regressionIn statistics, the logistic model (or logit model) is a statistical model that models the probability of an event taking place by having the log-odds for the event be a linear combination of one or more independent variables. In regression analysis, logistic regression (or logit regression) is estimating the parameters of a logistic model (the coefficients in the linear combination).
Hidden Markov modelA hidden Markov model (HMM) is a statistical Markov model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process — call it — with unobservable ("hidden") states. As part of the definition, HMM requires that there be an observable process whose outcomes are "influenced" by the outcomes of in a known way.
Latent and observable variablesIn statistics, latent variables (from Latin: present participle of lateo, “lie hidden”) are variables that can only be inferred indirectly through a mathematical model from other observable variables that can be directly observed or measured. Such latent variable models are used in many disciplines, including political science, demography, engineering, medicine, ecology, physics, machine learning/artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, chemometrics, natural language processing, management, psychology and the social sciences.
Multinomial logistic regressionIn statistics, multinomial logistic regression is a classification method that generalizes logistic regression to multiclass problems, i.e. with more than two possible discrete outcomes. That is, it is a model that is used to predict the probabilities of the different possible outcomes of a categorically distributed dependent variable, given a set of independent variables (which may be real-valued, binary-valued, categorical-valued, etc.).
Conditional probabilityIn probability theory, conditional probability is a measure of the probability of an event occurring, given that another event (by assumption, presumption, assertion or evidence) has already occurred. This particular method relies on event B occurring with some sort of relationship with another event A. In this event, the event B can be analyzed by a conditional probability with respect to A. If the event of interest is A and the event B is known or assumed to have occurred, "the conditional probability of A given B", or "the probability of A under the condition B", is usually written as P(AB) or occasionally P_B(A).
Linear regressionIn statistics, linear regression is a linear approach for modelling the relationship between a scalar response and one or more explanatory variables (also known as dependent and independent variables). The case of one explanatory variable is called simple linear regression; for more than one, the process is called multiple linear regression. This term is distinct from multivariate linear regression, where multiple correlated dependent variables are predicted, rather than a single scalar variable.
Estimation theoryEstimation theory is a branch of statistics that deals with estimating the values of parameters based on measured empirical data that has a random component. The parameters describe an underlying physical setting in such a way that their value affects the distribution of the measured data. An estimator attempts to approximate the unknown parameters using the measurements.
Likelihood functionIn statistical inference, the likelihood function quantifies the plausibility of parameter values characterizing a statistical model in light of observed data. Its most typical usage is to compare possible parameter values (under a fixed set of observations and a particular model), where higher values of likelihood are preferred because they correspond to more probable parameter values.
Conditional independenceIn probability theory, conditional independence describes situations wherein an observation is irrelevant or redundant when evaluating the certainty of a hypothesis. Conditional independence is usually formulated in terms of conditional probability, as a special case where the probability of the hypothesis given the uninformative observation is equal to the probability without. If is the hypothesis, and and are observations, conditional independence can be stated as an equality: where is the probability of given both and .
Latent variable modelA latent variable model is a statistical model that relates a set of observable variables (also called manifest variables or indicators) to a set of latent variables. It is assumed that the responses on the indicators or manifest variables are the result of an individual's position on the latent variable(s), and that the manifest variables have nothing in common after controlling for the latent variable (local independence).
Inner product spaceIn mathematics, an inner product space (or, rarely, a Hausdorff pre-Hilbert space) is a real vector space or a complex vector space with an operation called an inner product. The inner product of two vectors in the space is a scalar, often denoted with angle brackets such as in . Inner products allow formal definitions of intuitive geometric notions, such as lengths, angles, and orthogonality (zero inner product) of vectors. Inner product spaces generalize Euclidean vector spaces, in which the inner product is the dot product or scalar product of Cartesian coordinates.
ParameterA parameter (), generally, is any characteristic that can help in defining or classifying a particular system (meaning an event, project, object, situation, etc.). That is, a parameter is an element of a system that is useful, or critical, when identifying the system, or when evaluating its performance, status, condition, etc. Parameter has more specific meanings within various disciplines, including mathematics, computer programming, engineering, statistics, logic, linguistics, and electronic musical composition.
Statistical parameterIn statistics, as opposed to its general use in mathematics, a parameter is any measured quantity of a statistical population that summarises or describes an aspect of the population, such as a mean or a standard deviation. If a population exactly follows a known and defined distribution, for example the normal distribution, then a small set of parameters can be measured which completely describes the population, and can be considered to define a probability distribution for the purposes of extracting samples from this population.
Ordered logitIn statistics, the ordered logit model (also ordered logistic regression or proportional odds model) is an ordinal regression model—that is, a regression model for ordinal dependent variables—first considered by Peter McCullagh. For example, if one question on a survey is to be answered by a choice among "poor", "fair", "good", "very good" and "excellent", and the purpose of the analysis is to see how well that response can be predicted by the responses to other questions, some of which may be quantitative, then ordered logistic regression may be used.
Logistic distributionIn probability theory and statistics, the logistic distribution is a continuous probability distribution. Its cumulative distribution function is the logistic function, which appears in logistic regression and feedforward neural networks. It resembles the normal distribution in shape but has heavier tails (higher kurtosis). The logistic distribution is a special case of the Tukey lambda distribution.
Conditional probability distributionIn probability theory and statistics, given two jointly distributed random variables and , the conditional probability distribution of given is the probability distribution of when is known to be a particular value; in some cases the conditional probabilities may be expressed as functions containing the unspecified value of as a parameter. When both and are categorical variables, a conditional probability table is typically used to represent the conditional probability.
