Generator estimation of Markov jump processes
Estimating the generator of a continuous-time Markov jump process based on incomplete data is a problem which arises in various applications ranging from machine learning to molecular dynamics. Several methods have been devised for this purpose: a quadratic programming approach (cf. [D.T. Crommelin, E. Vanden-Eijnden, Fitting timeseries by continuous-time Markov chains: a quadratic programming approach, J. Comp. Phys. 217 (2006) 782-805]), a resolvent method (cf. [T. Muller, Modellierung von Proteinevolution, PhD thesis, Heidelberg, 2001]), and various implementations of an expectation-maximization algorithm ([S. Asmussen, O. Nerman, M. Olsson, Fitting phase-type distributions via the EM algorithm, Scand. J. Stat. 23 (1996) 419-441; I. Holmes, G.M. Rubin, An expectation maximization algorithm for training hidden substitution models, J. Mol. Biol. 317 (2002) 753-764; U. Nodelman, C.R. Shelton, D. Koller, Expectation maximization and complex duration distributions for continuous time Bayesian networks, in: Proceedings of the twenty-first conference on uncertainty in AI (UAI), 2005, pp. 421-430; M. Bladt, M. Sorensen, Statistical inference for discretely observed Markov jump processes, JR. Statist. Soc. B 67 (2005) 395-410]). Some of these methods, however, seem to be known only in a particular research community, and have later been reinvented in a different context. The purpose of this paper is to compile a catalogue of existing approaches, to compare the strengths and weaknesses, and to test their performance in a series of numerical examples. These examples include carefully chosen model problems and an application to time series from molecular dynamics. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
generator estimation markov jump process embedding problem em-algorithm maximum likelihood