Premium
On Bootstrapping the Likelihood Ratio Test Statistic for the Number of Components in a Normal Mixture
Author(s) -
McLachlan G. J.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
journal of the royal statistical society: series c (applied statistics)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.205
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9876
pISSN - 0035-9254
DOI - 10.2307/2347790
Subject(s) - bootstrapping (finance) , statistics , likelihood ratio test , mathematics , test (biology) , score test , econometrics , paleontology , biology
SUMMARY An important but difficult problem in practice is assessing the number of components g in a mixture. An obvious way of proceeding is to use the likelihood ratio test statistic λ to test for the smallest value of g consistent with the data. Unfortunately with mixture models, regularity conditions do not hold for –2 log λ to have it usual asymptotic null distribution of chi‐squared. In this paper the role of the bootstrap is highlighted for the assessment of the null distribution of –2 log λ for the test of a single normal density versus a mixture of two normal densities in the univariate case.