The EM Algorithm in Genetics, Genomics and Public Health

TL;DR

This paper provides a nontechnical overview of the EM algorithm, highlighting its origins, key properties, and broad applicability across genetics, genomics, and public health research.

Contribution

It offers a simplified introduction to the EM algorithm and illustrates its use through characteristic examples in scientific research.

Findings

The EM algorithm is widely applicable in genetics and public health.

It has key properties that make it useful for complex data analysis.

The paper clarifies the algorithm's general form and significance.

Abstract

The popularity of the EM algorithm owes much to the 1977 paper by Dempster, Laird and Rubin. That paper gave the algorithm its name, identified the general form and some key properties of the algorithm and established its broad applicability in scientific research. This review gives a nontechnical introduction to the algorithm for a general scientific audience, and presents a few examples characteristic of its application.