Why is a Gaussian mixture model used?

Question

Can anyone give a realistic example of what a Gaussian mixture model(GMM) is? Why do we go for GMM and how it works? I read some content about the same but they have explained in a mathematical way. They say it is used on heterogeneous population but I am not able to relate it with some realistic example . Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

GMM is used for the data, where GMM distribution describes it's good, or where the True distribution can be approximated by a GMM.

For example you can look on the 'people height' distribution, I believe it could approximated by a GMM with 2 components, where fist component will describe the men height (for example: 175 cm) and the second component will describe the women height (for example: 160 cm).