What is the meaning of negative empirical Likelihood in HLDA Mallet?

Question

I am using mallet to train a hierarchical LDA model. However when calculating the empirical Likelihood using:

double empiricalLikelihood = hlda.empiricalLikelihood(1000, testing);

I am getting a negative number. How can I interpret the meaning of that negative number?

Regards

Answer 1

It's the log of a probability. All probabilities are between 0-1, so their log is negative.