Overspecified Mixture Discriminant Analysis: Exponential Convergence, Statistical Guarantees, and Remote Sensing Applications

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bolatov, Arman, Legg, Alan, Melnykov, Igor, Nurlanuly, Amantay, Tezekbayev, Maxat, Assylbekov, Zhenisbek
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914126543978496
author Bolatov, Arman
Legg, Alan
Melnykov, Igor
Nurlanuly, Amantay
Tezekbayev, Maxat
Assylbekov, Zhenisbek
author_facet Bolatov, Arman
Legg, Alan
Melnykov, Igor
Nurlanuly, Amantay
Tezekbayev, Maxat
Assylbekov, Zhenisbek
contents This study explores the classification error of Mixture Discriminant Analysis (MDA) in scenarios where the number of mixture components exceeds those present in the actual data distribution, a condition known as overspecification. We use a two-component Gaussian mixture model within each class to fit data generated from a single Gaussian, analyzing both the algorithmic convergence of the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm and the statistical classification error. We demonstrate that, with suitable initialization, the EM algorithm converges exponentially fast to the Bayes risk at the population level. Further, we extend our results to finite samples, showing that the classification error converges to Bayes risk with a rate $n^{-1/2}$ under mild conditions on the initial parameter estimates and sample size. This work provides a rigorous theoretical framework for understanding the performance of overspecified MDA, which is often used empirically in complex data settings, such as image and text classification. To validate our theory, we conduct experiments on remote sensing datasets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_27056
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Overspecified Mixture Discriminant Analysis: Exponential Convergence, Statistical Guarantees, and Remote Sensing Applications
Bolatov, Arman
Legg, Alan
Melnykov, Igor
Nurlanuly, Amantay
Tezekbayev, Maxat
Assylbekov, Zhenisbek
Machine Learning
This study explores the classification error of Mixture Discriminant Analysis (MDA) in scenarios where the number of mixture components exceeds those present in the actual data distribution, a condition known as overspecification. We use a two-component Gaussian mixture model within each class to fit data generated from a single Gaussian, analyzing both the algorithmic convergence of the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm and the statistical classification error. We demonstrate that, with suitable initialization, the EM algorithm converges exponentially fast to the Bayes risk at the population level. Further, we extend our results to finite samples, showing that the classification error converges to Bayes risk with a rate $n^{-1/2}$ under mild conditions on the initial parameter estimates and sample size. This work provides a rigorous theoretical framework for understanding the performance of overspecified MDA, which is often used empirically in complex data settings, such as image and text classification. To validate our theory, we conduct experiments on remote sensing datasets.
title Overspecified Mixture Discriminant Analysis: Exponential Convergence, Statistical Guarantees, and Remote Sensing Applications
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.27056