A Gaussian mixture distribution is a weighted sum of normal distribution densities, with nonnegative weights summing to one. It need not itself be a normal distribution: components with different means and variances can produce skewness or several modes. Its raw moments are weighted sums of the component moments.
Choose six illustrative values , fixed mixture weights , known standard deviation , and initial means . These are constructed data for a Gaussian mixture distribution, not measurements. With the standard normal distribution probability density function, the fitted log-likelihood is
At the initial means, the component density ratio is . The first E-step therefore gives
Figure 1.
The first E-step retains two soft label probabilities at each chosen data point
. Initial means are minus one and one, mixture weights are one half, and the known standard deviation is one. Stacked bars show the two conditional label probabilities; every row sums to one. Small but nonzero probabilities remain visible in the numerical labels. Details.
The paired values and have complementary mixture responsibilities, so exactly. The first M-step gives
The hyperbolic tangent expression follows by pairing the contributions at and . Assigning every negative value wholly to the first mixture component and every positive value wholly to the second would instead give means . Those hard assignments discard the overlap: the expectation-maximization algorithm is not the same update as K-means clustering.
The observed-data log-likelihood rises from initially to after one update and after two. Further updates approach means , with log-likelihood approximately . These values describe this initialization; EM likelihood monotonicity supplies no certificate of a global maximum.
Figure 2.
Likelihood ascent and mean updates for the chosen data, compared with an identical-means initialization
. Iteration zero is the initial fit; each subsequent point follows one E-step and one M-step. Starting at minus one and one increases the likelihood. Starting both means at zero leaves them at zero with a lower constant likelihood. All runs keep variance one and weights one half. Details.
For stable numerical evaluation, put and . The log-sum-exp function gives
Subtracting keeps at least one exponential equal to one, avoiding the all-zero sum that direct evaluation of tiny component densities can produce.
Put , and , where . The small- Taylor series give
In the Kármán-Howarth equation, the coefficient of on the left is . On the right, the triple-correlation term contributes and the viscous term contributes . Hence
Comparing with the mean enstrophy balance identifies the mean vortex stretching:
Also , whereas differentiability gives . Thus . Homogeneity makes , so the longitudinal velocity-gradient skewness is . Substitution gives
Positive mean vortex stretching therefore requires negative skewness. A centered Gaussian distribution has zero third moment, so the derivative statistics cannot be Gaussian. This conclusion uses the physically positive mean stretching, not homogeneity alone.
The probability density function has mean zero but a longer or stronger negative tail, representing intermittent compression. The illustration uses a standardized Gaussian mixture distribution solely to sketch this sign of skewness; it is not turbulence simulation data or a fitted universal distribution.
Figure 1.
Illustrative negatively skewed longitudinal velocity-gradient density
. Details.
Stipulate an original Gaussian mixture distribution with mixture weights , , component means , , and component variances both equal to one. These are chosen statistical parameters, with no observed sample or fitting. If is the standard normal distribution probability density function, then
In the figure, the two colored curves are weighted probability density functions, with areas and . Adding their heights at every gives the black curve. Neither colored curve stops at a dividing line.
Figure 1.
Stipulated two-Gaussian mixture: weighted component densities and their sum
. Original analytic curves for component means and , component variances one, and mixture weights and . No observed points, histogram, or fitted parameters are used. Details.
The law of total expectation and law of total variance give the total mean and variance:
All of the extra variance comes from variation between component means. Equivalently, the second moment is , so the variance is .
A mixture distribution is different from a deterministic linear combination of random variables. If independent and are drawn and , then has a normal distribution with the same mean but variance , rather than . Every draw of uses both random variables. A draw from the mixture distribution instead uses , where the mixture allocation indicators are independent of and select exactly one of them. The expression for adds densities, not simultaneous random outcomes.