Mixture decomposition via the simulated annealing algorithm

This paper presents the problem of the evaluation of the maximum likelihood estimator, when the likelihood function has multiple maxima, using the stochastic algorithm called ‘simulated annealing’. Analysis of the particular case of the decomposition of a mixture of five univariate normal distributions shows the properties of this methodology with respect to the E—M algorithm. The results are compared considering some distance measures between the estimated distribution functions and the true one.