The Annals of Applied Probability

Learning nonsingular phylogenies and hidden Markov models

Elchanan Mossel and Sébastien Roch

Source: Ann. Appl. Probab. Volume 16, Number 2 (2006), 583-614.

Abstract

In this paper we study the problem of learning phylogenies and hidden Markov models. We call a Markov model nonsingular if all transition matrices have determinants bounded away from 0 (and 1). We highlight the role of the nonsingularity condition for the learning problem. Learning hidden Markov models without the nonsingularity condition is at least as hard as learning parity with noise, a well-known learning problem conjectured to be computationally hard. On the other hand, we give a polynomial-time algorithm for learning nonsingular phylogenies and hidden Markov models.

Primary Subjects: 60J10, 60J20, 68T05, 92B10
Keywords: Hidden Markov models; evolutionary trees; phylogenetic reconstruction; PAC learning

Full-text: Open access

Links and Identifiers

Permanent link to this document: http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aoap/1151592244
Digital Object Identifier: doi:10.1214/105051606000000024
Zentralblatt MATH identifier: 1137.60034

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