Lecture

Maximum Likelihood Estimation

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In course

MATH-240: Statistics

Ce cours donne une introduction au traitement mathématique de la théorie de l'inférence statistique en utilisant la notion de vraisemblance comme un thème central. ...

Description

This lecture covers the concept of Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) in statistical inference, focusing on the estimation of parameters in regular parametric models. It explains the Cramér-Rao bound, the method of maximum likelihood, and the properties of MLE in both discrete and continuous cases. The lecture also discusses the Fisher information and the uniqueness of MLE in exponential families. The instructor provides examples of MLE for Bernoulli, exponential, and Gaussian distributions, highlighting the importance of equivariance in MLE. The lecture concludes with a general proposition on the uniqueness of MLE in one-parameter exponential families.

Instructors (2)

Victor Panaretos

Curriculum vitae Background & EducationPublications & PreprintsHonours & AwardsEditorial ActivitiesInvited Talks & Seminars Teaching & PhD PhD Students Ulysse Naepels, Nikitas Georgakis, Ho Yun Past EPFL PhD Students Andrea Kraus, Shahin Tavakoli, Mikael Kuusela, Yoav Zemel, Marie-Hélène Descary, Valentina Masarotto, Tomas Rubin, Tomas Masák, Laya Ghodrati, Kartik Waghmare, Leonardo Santoro Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Matthieu Simeoni, Ophelia Miralles, Sonia Alouini, Timmy Rong Tian Tse, Krali M

Yoav Zemel

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Statistics

Statistical inference: Mathematical statistics

Related concepts (32)

Estimation theory

Estimation 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.

Maximum likelihood estimation

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. 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.

Fisher information

In mathematical statistics, the Fisher information (sometimes simply called information) is a way of measuring the amount of information that an observable random variable X carries about an unknown parameter θ of a distribution that models X. Formally, it is the variance of the score, or the expected value of the observed information. The role of the Fisher information in the asymptotic theory of maximum-likelihood estimation was emphasized by the statistician Ronald Fisher (following some initial results by Francis Ysidro Edgeworth).

Exponential distribution

In probability theory and statistics, the exponential distribution or negative exponential distribution is the probability distribution of the time between events in a Poisson point process, i.e., a process in which events occur continuously and independently at a constant average rate. It is a particular case of the gamma distribution. It is the continuous analogue of the geometric distribution, and it has the key property of being memoryless. In addition to being used for the analysis of Poisson point processes it is found in various other contexts.

Exponential family

In probability and statistics, an exponential family is a parametric set of probability distributions of a certain form, specified below. This special form is chosen for mathematical convenience, including the enabling of the user to calculate expectations, covariances using differentiation based on some useful algebraic properties, as well as for generality, as exponential families are in a sense very natural sets of distributions to consider. The term exponential class is sometimes used in place of "exponential family", or the older term Koopman–Darmois family.

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