Maximum likelihood estimation of Gaussian mixture models without matrix operations

The Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is a popular tool for multivariate analysis, in particular, cluster analysis. The expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm is generally used to perform maximum likelihood (ML) estimation for GMMs due to the M-step existing in closed form and its desirable numerical properties, such as monotonicity. However, the EM algorithm has been criticized as being slow to converge and thus computationally expensive in some situations. In this article, we introduce the linear regression characterization (LRC) of the GMM. We show that the parameters of an LRC of the GMM can be mapped back to the natural parameters, and that a minorization–maximization (MM) algorithm can be constructed, which retains the desirable numerical properties of the EM algorithm, without the use of matrix operations. We prove that the ML estimators of the LRC parameters are consistent and asymptotically normal, like their natural counterparts. Furthermore, we show that the LRC allows for simple handling of singularities in the ML estimation of GMMs. Using numerical simulations in the R programming environment, we then demonstrate that the MM algorithm can be faster than the EM algorithm in various large data situations, where sample sizes range in the tens to hundreds of thousands and for estimating models with up to 16 mixture components on multivariate data with up to 16 variables.