IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/stapro/v230y2026ics0167715225002536.html

Fitting mixtures of von Mises distributions via noise contrastive estimation

Author

Listed:
  • Di Nuzzo, Cinzia
  • Ingrassia, Salvatore
  • Scaffidi Domianello, Luca

Abstract

Directional distributions requires the evaluation of complicated normalizing constants, even for the univariate von Mises. For this reason, maximum likelihood estimation methods are often difficult to apply in practice. To address this issue, we present an approach based on Noise Contrastive Estimation (NCE), a statistical learning technique used for parameter estimation in non-normalized statistical models. In NCE, the estimation problem is reformulated as a binary classification task. In this paper, we focus on fitting mixtures of von Mises distributions, with particular emphasis on toroidal data. Our application to real data, in which we compare several estimation methods, suggests that NCE is a promising alternative for parameter inference in finite mixtures of directional distributions.

Suggested Citation

  • Di Nuzzo, Cinzia & Ingrassia, Salvatore & Scaffidi Domianello, Luca, 2026. "Fitting mixtures of von Mises distributions via noise contrastive estimation," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 230(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:stapro:v:230:y:2026:i:c:s0167715225002536
    DOI: 10.1016/j.spl.2025.110608
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167715225002536
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.spl.2025.110608?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lawrence Hubert & Phipps Arabie, 1985. "Comparing partitions," Journal of Classification, Springer;The Classification Society, vol. 2(1), pages 193-218, December.
    2. Kanti Mardia, 2010. "Bayesian analysis for bivariate von Mises distributions," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 515-528.
    3. Kanti V. Mardia & Charles C. Taylor & Ganesh K. Subramaniam, 2007. "Protein Bioinformatics and Mixtures of Bivariate von Mises Distributions for Angular Data," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 63(2), pages 505-512, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mardia, Kanti V., 2025. "Fisher’s legacy of directional statistics, and beyond to statistics on manifolds," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    2. Anahita Nodehi & Mousa Golalizadeh & Mehdi Maadooliat & Claudio Agostinelli, 2021. "Estimation of parameters in multivariate wrapped models for data on a p-torus," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 193-215, March.
    3. Miriam Aparicio, 2021. "Resiliency and Cooperation or Regarding Social and Collective Competencies for University Achievement. An Analysis from a Systemic Perspective," European Journal of Social Sciences Education and Research Articles, Revistia Research and Publishing, vol. 8, ejser_v8_.
    4. Yunpeng Zhao & Qing Pan & Chengan Du, 2019. "Logistic regression augmented community detection for network data with application in identifying autism‐related gene pathways," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 75(1), pages 222-234, March.
    5. Wu, Han-Ming & Tien, Yin-Jing & Chen, Chun-houh, 2010. "GAP: A graphical environment for matrix visualization and cluster analysis," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 767-778, March.
    6. José E. Chacón, 2021. "Explicit Agreement Extremes for a 2 × 2 Table with Given Marginals," Journal of Classification, Springer;The Classification Society, vol. 38(2), pages 257-263, July.
    7. F. Marta L. Di Lascio & Andrea Menapace & Roberta Pappadà, 2024. "A spatially‐weighted AMH copula‐based dissimilarity measure for clustering variables: An application to urban thermal efficiency," Environmetrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(1), February.
    8. Yifan Zhu & Chongzhi Di & Ying Qing Chen, 2019. "Clustering Functional Data with Application to Electronic Medication Adherence Monitoring in HIV Prevention Trials," Statistics in Biosciences, Springer;International Chinese Statistical Association, vol. 11(2), pages 238-261, July.
    9. Zhen-Hao Guo & De-Shuang Huang & Shihua Zhang, 2026. "Multi-species integration, alignment and annotation of single-cell RNA-seq data with CAMEX," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 17(1), pages 1-17, December.
    10. Irene Vrbik & Paul McNicholas, 2015. "Fractionally-Supervised Classification," Journal of Classification, Springer;The Classification Society, vol. 32(3), pages 359-381, October.
    11. Maurizio Vichi & Carlo Cavicchia & Patrick J. F. Groenen, 2022. "Hierarchical Means Clustering," Journal of Classification, Springer;The Classification Society, vol. 39(3), pages 553-577, November.
    12. Batool, Fatima & Hennig, Christian, 2021. "Clustering with the Average Silhouette Width," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    13. Patrick D. Shay & Stephen S. Farnsworth Mick, 2017. "Clustered and distinct: a taxonomy of local multihospital systems," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 303-315, September.
    14. Roberto Rocci & Stefano Antonio Gattone & Roberto Di Mari, 2018. "A data driven equivariant approach to constrained Gaussian mixture modeling," Advances in Data Analysis and Classification, Springer;German Classification Society - Gesellschaft für Klassifikation (GfKl);Japanese Classification Society (JCS);Classification and Data Analysis Group of the Italian Statistical Society (CLADAG);International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS), vol. 12(2), pages 235-260, June.
    15. Yue Wan & Jialu Wu & Tingjun Hou & Chang-Yu Hsieh & Xiaowei Jia, 2025. "Multi-channel learning for integrating structural hierarchies into context-dependent molecular representation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-13, December.
    16. Wan-Lun Wang, 2019. "Mixture of multivariate t nonlinear mixed models for multiple longitudinal data with heterogeneity and missing values," TEST: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 28(1), pages 196-222, March.
    17. Matthijs Warrens, 2010. "Inequalities Between Kappa and Kappa-Like Statistics for k×k Tables," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 75(1), pages 176-185, March.
    18. Redivo, Edoardo & Nguyen, Hien D. & Gupta, Mayetri, 2020. "Bayesian clustering of skewed and multimodal data using geometric skewed normal distributions," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    19. Jerzy Korzeniewski, 2016. "New Method Of Variable Selection For Binary Data Cluster Analysis," Statistics in Transition New Series, Polish Statistical Association, vol. 17(2), pages 295-304, June.
    20. Anahita Nodehi & Mousa Golalizadeh & Mehdi Maadooliat & Claudio Agostinelli, 2025. "Torus Probabilistic Principal Component Analysis," Journal of Classification, Springer;The Classification Society, vol. 42(2), pages 435-456, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:stapro:v:230:y:2026:i:c:s0167715225002536. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622892/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.