original_query: What is a mixture model in statistics?
query: What is a mixture model in statistics?
answer: In statistics, a mixture model is a probabilistic model representing the presence of subpopulations within an overall population, without needing to identify the subpopulation of each observation.  It corresponds to a mixture distribution showing the overall population's probability distribution.  Mixture models are used to make statistical inferences about subpopulation properties, given observations on the pooled population without sub-population identity information.