For and a positivity-preserving operator, this is the negative log-likelihood for independent Poisson observations with intensity , up to constants depending only on the data and the unit background. For bounded , its scalar derivatives are and on . It is convex, and strictly convex in the predicted intensity when almost everywhere. On a unit-area domain, the Jensen inequality gives . The shift makes integrable whenever ; no integrability of is needed.
Sigmoid-softmax network gradients Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
For hidden activations and class probabilities , a one-hot label has log-likelihood . Put and . Then
These follow from the chain rule and give single-observation stochastic gradient descent updates for the negative log-likelihood.
Simulated annealing Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-18
Simulated annealing accepts worse feasible solutions to escape a local minimum. Minimize an objective function , analogous to energy. Effective temperature has the same units as , absorbing the Boltzmann constant; it controls exploration, rather than a material's thermodynamic temperature.[ref]
Given current feasible point , draw from a proposal distribution . For a symmetric proposal distribution, , use the Metropolis–Hastings acceptance probability
Accept with this conditional probability; on rejection retain . Every downhill or equal-cost proposal is accepted. Draw a fresh uniform random variable on and accept if . The off-diagonal transition probability includes proposing .[ref]
For a maximization problem with objective function , set : every improving proposed neighbor is accepted, and a worsening move of loss has conditional probability of acceptance, under the same symmetry assumption. Likelihood-power annealing uses precisely this sign convention for a log-likelihood. Retain the best feasible solution seen, since the current state can worsen even after a global minimum has been visited.
If the proposal distribution is asymmetric, use the full Metropolis–Hastings acceptance probability, for ,
A missing reverse proposal gives zero acceptance. Even a downhill proposal need not be accepted with probability one in this case. Choosing uniformly among a variable number of neighbors is generally asymmetric: and give the correction , where is vertex degree.[ref]
The useful idea is to separate exploring from insisting on improvement: an uphill move can open a route to a better feasible solution. Its usefulness depends on the proposal distribution, the scale of the objective function, and the cooling schedule for simulated annealing. Finite practical schedules carry no general guarantee of finding a global minimum.
Take two visible bipolar units, no hidden units, zero thresholds, , and . As original training data, assign probabilities each to and and each to and . The data pair product averages to . Enumeration of all four states gives two weights and two , hence the partition function and
Starting at , the positive-minus-negative difference is . A gradient ascent step of size gives . Each aligned state now has probability and each opposed state , bringing the model toward the data. The log-likelihood increases from to . Solving gives , which reproduces the data exactly. Since , this is the unique maximum. These are exact enumerations and their decimal evaluations, with no sampling or laboratory measurements.
Figure 1.
Exact probabilities and positive-minus-negative learning for two visible units
. Left: data and model probabilities before and after one gradient ascent step. Right: the data pair-product average and the model average determine the log-likelihood derivative; their intersection gives the optimal coupling. Details.
Uniform-alternative binomial Bayes factor Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-25
For a binomial distribution count, compare a point null with the uniform alternative prior distribution on . The alternative Bayesian model evidence is
so the exact Bayes factor favouring the point null is . With standardized deviation , the local normal distribution approximation is . At fixed the frequentist p-value remains approximately constant, while the factor grows like . This demonstrates the prior-width mechanism behind the Jeffreys-Lindley paradox for a Gaussian point null in a discrete sampling model.
For a separate original example, change the point null to and take to have a uniform prior , fixed before the ten Bernoulli trials. Here is drawn once under and shared by all ten trials: they are independent conditional on . For one particular ordered sequence with eight heads and two tails, the Euler beta function gives
Thus the Bayes factor for the uniform alternative against the point null is
The binomial distribution count formulation gives and . Their ratio is again ; these count masses must not be combined with the ordered-sequence masses above. The general formula at the start of this article puts the point null in the numerator, so it equals here.
In contrast, maximum likelihood estimation gives : differentiating the log-likelihood yields , and the endpoints have zero likelihood. Its peak-to-null likelihood ratio is
This peak is chosen after seeing the data, so it is not the Bayes factor of the prespecified . The Bayesian model evidence for averages over its entire uniform prior; it is smaller than the peak. It is also smaller than . Against the same null, a point alternative fixed at would give a Bayes factor about , greater than . An integrated alternative need not outperform a point alternative.
Figure 1.
A uniform-prior average of the likelihood differs from its maximum
. Original calculation for a stipulated ordered sequence with eight heads and two tails. Left: the likelihood function and its uniform prior average , with the point null at and peak at . Right: the average, fixed value, and peak divided by the same null value . Only the first two comparisons use prespecified alternatives; the peak uses a maximum-likelihood estimate. These are calculated model quantities, not measured frequencies. Details.
For a general proper beta distribution prior distribution with , the same ordered-sequence marginal likelihood is . This follows by substituting the normalized prior density into the integral, and shows exactly where the parameter prior distribution changes the Bayes factor. Holding the parameter prior distributions fixed while changing model prior odds leaves that Bayes factor unchanged.