EM Algorithm

The Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is an iterative optimization procedure for finding maximum likelihood or maximum a posteriori estimates of parameters in statistical models with latent variables or missing data. Introduced by Dempster, Laird, and Rubin in their landmark 1977 paper, EM alternates between computing the expected complete-data log-likelihood (E-step) and maximizing it with respect to the parameters (M-step), guaranteeing monotone non-decreasing likelihood at each iteration.