{"paper":{"title":"Nonparametric MLE for Gaussian Location Mixtures: Certified Computation and Generic Behavior","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["stat.ML","stat.TH"],"primary_cat":"math.ST","authors_text":"Mark Sellke, Yury Polyanskiy","submitted_at":"2025-03-26T03:36:36Z","abstract_excerpt":"We study the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator $\\widehat{\\pi}$ for Gaussian location mixtures in one dimension. It has been known since (Lindsay, 1983) that given an $n$-point dataset, this estimator always returns a mixture with at most $n$ components, and more recently (Wu-Polyanskiy, 2020) gave a sharp $O(\\log n)$ bound for subgaussian data. In this work we study computational aspects of $\\widehat{\\pi}$. We provide an algorithm which for small enough $\\varepsilon>0$ computes an $\\varepsilon$-approximation of $\\widehat\\pi$ in Wasserstein distance in time $K+Cnk^2\\log\\log(1/\\varepsil"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2503.20193","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2503.20193/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}