  Maximum likelihood estimation is a fundamental optimization problem in
statistics. We study this problem on manifolds of matrices with bounded rank.
These represent mixtures of distributions of two independent discrete random
variables. We determine the maximum likelihood degree for a range of
determinantal varieties, and we apply numerical algebraic geometry to compute
all critical points of their likelihood functions. This led to the discovery of
maximum likelihood duality between matrices of complementary ranks, a result
proved subsequently by Draisma and Rodriguez.
