The Log-likelihood Function
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**MAXLIKMT** is a set of procedures for estimating the parameters of models via the maximum likelihood method with general constraints on the parameters, along with an additional set of procedures for statistical inference.

**MAXLIKMT** solves the general weighted maximum likelihood problem

.. math:: L = \sum^N_{i=1} log P(Y_i;\theta)^{\omega_i}

where :math:`N` is the number of observations, :math:`omega_i` is a weight, :math:`P(Y_i, \theta) is the probability of :math:`Y_i` given :math:`\theta`, a vector of parameters, subject to the linear constraints

.. math:: A(\theta) = B
.. math:: C(\theta) \geq D          

the nonlinear constraints
 
.. math:: G(\theta) = 0
.. math:: H(\theta) \geq 0     

and bounds, 
  
.. math:: \theta_L \leq \theta \leq \theta_u
  
:math:`G(\theta)` and :math:`H(\theta)` are functions provided by the user and must be differentiable at least once with respect to the parameters.

The procedure :func:`maxlikmt` finds values for the parameters in :math:`\theta` such that :math:`L` is maximized. In fact :func:`maxlikmt` minimizes . It is important to note, however, that the user must specify the log-probability to be maximized and :func:`maxlikmt` transforms the function into the form to be minimized.

:func:`maxlikmt` has been designed to make the specification of the function and the handling of the data convenient. The user supplies a procedure that computes :math:`log P(Y_i; \theta)` i.e., the log-likelihood, given the parameters in :math:`\theta`, for either an individual observation or set of observations (i.e., it must return either the log-likelihood for an individual observation or a vector of log-likelihoods for a matrix of observations). **MAXLIKMT** uses this procedure to construct the function to be minimized.