Flashover voltage estimation has been carried out conventionally with the u
p-and down method by Dixon and Mood. Recently, Hirose and Kato proposed a n
ew version of the method to change the way of analyzing data. Although the
method has better properties than the conventional one, it requires solving
maximum likelihood equations. In this paper we reduce the troublesome task
(e.g. implementation and the selection of a proper initial value) attendan
t on the requirement by using the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm t
hat gives a useful iterative formula to solve the equations. The iterative
formula almost always can give the solutions of the likelihood equations be
cause of its excellent global convergence of the EM algorithm.