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question about AIC

4 messages · dlavecchia@tiscali.it, Brian Ripley, Dimitris Rizopoulos +1 more

#
Hi everybody,
we are a pool of phd students and we have a question about AIC. We are interested
in calculating the AIC for a mixture model on galaxies data. So far we have
found AIC works only for regression models, whereas we need AIC for a mixture
of Normal with mean, sd and weights given by our  EM algorithm.
May you help us?
thanks in advance
                        

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#
On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 dlavecchia at tiscali.it wrote:

            
What is the problem?  The concept AIC or the function AIC()?  If the 
concept, it was originally developed in the area of AR(p) time series 
models, using asymptotic theory for MLEs, and you need to check that the 
concepts apply to your situation (the original papers do not).

Note there are some fundamental problems here: the likelihood for a 
mixture of normals is unbounded, the MLE corresponding to degenerate 
(zero-variance) components.  And AIC is about maximized likelihoods, with 
maxima in the interior of the space.  So you need to take some 
professional statistical advice about the concepts.
#
did you try google? e.g., with key word: `AIC mixture models'. 
Moreover, look at package `flexmix' (i.e., help(package="flexmix")) 
whose usage is illustrated in a recent article in JSS:

http://www.jstatsoft.org/v11/i08/v11i08.pdf

I hope it helps.

Best,
Dimitris

----
Dimitris Rizopoulos
Ph.D. Student
Biostatistical Centre
School of Public Health
Catholic University of Leuven

Address: Kapucijnenvoer 35, Leuven, Belgium
Tel: +32/16/396887
Fax: +32/16/337015
Web: http://www.med.kuleuven.ac.be/biostat
     http://www.student.kuleuven.ac.be/~m0390867/dimitris.htm


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <dlavecchia at tiscali.it>
To: <R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 10:12 AM
Subject: [R] question about AIC
#
I would also mention the "mixreg" package on CRAN.
Regards
m.

**********************************************
Massimiliano Marinucci
http://personales.ya.com/max_mar/
Ph.D Candidate in Economics
Fundamentos del Analisis Econ??mico II
(Econom??a Cuantitativa)
Facultad de CC.EE.
Universidad Complutense Madrid
Campus de Somosaguas
Madrid - Spain
**********************************************

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dimitris Rizopoulos" <dimitris.rizopoulos at med.kuleuven.ac.be>
To: <dlavecchia at tiscali.it>
Cc: <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 10:35 AM
Subject: Re: [R] question about AIC
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html