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Coordinate Ascent Perspective of the Expectation-Maximization Algorithm

The Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm can be interpreted as a coordinate ascent algorithm. By treating both the latent variables ZZ and the model parameters θ\theta as variables to be optimized, the EM algorithm alternates between optimizing one set of variables while holding the other fixed. Consequently, each optimization step (the E-step and the M-step) is parallel to one of the coordinate axes in the parameter space.

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Updated 2026-06-13

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Data Science