Moment ideals of local Dirac mixtures

In this paper we study ideals arising from moments of local Dirac measures and their mixtures. We provide generators for the case of first order local Diracs and explain how to obtain the moment ideal of the Pareto distribution from them. We then use elimination theory and Prony's method for parameter estimation of finite mixtures. Our results are showcased with applications in signal processing and statistics. We highlight the natural connections to algebraic statistics, combinatorics and applications in analysis throughout the paper.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figure

The identifiability of tree topology for phylogenetic models, including covarion and mixture models

For a model of molecular evolution to be useful for phylogenetic inference, the topology of evolutionary trees must be identifiable. That is, from a joint distribution the model predicts, it must be possible to recover the tree parameter. We establish tree identifiability for a number of phylogenetic models, including a covarion model and a variety of mixture models with a limited number of classes. The proof is based on the introduction of a more general model, allowing more states at internal nodes of the tree than at leaves, and the study of the algebraic variety formed by the joint distributions to which it gives rise. Tree identifiability is first established for this general model through the use of certain phylogenetic invariants.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figur