Dictionary.com
Thesaurus.com

maximum likelihood

British  

noun

  1. the probability of randomly drawing a given sample from a population maximized over the possible values of the population parameters

  2. the non-Bayesian rule that, given an experimental observation, one should utilize as point estimates of parameters of a distribution those values which give the highest conditional probability to that observation, irrespective of the prior probability assigned to the parameters

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

Yang, Z. PAML: a program package for phylogenetic analysis by maximum likelihood.

From Nature ● May 8, 2018

Thus, BEAST2 can know that certain topologies are unlikely or impossible, whereas maximum likelihood cannot and thus inherently has greater uncertainty regarding tree topology.

From Nature ● May 8, 2018

Nodes with bootstrap support values of at least 70 from the maximum likelihood analysis and posterior probabilities of at least 0.95 from the Bayesian analysis are indicated with asterisks.

From Nature ● Dec. 25, 2016

Phylogenetic analysis of each data set was conducted using Bayesian inference in MrBayes and maximum likelihood in RAxML; input alignments are provided in Supplementary Data 8.

From Nature ● Dec. 25, 2016

A maximum likelihood tree was created, rooted by the split between two major types of terpene synthase genes, and nodes were coloured by species.

From Nature ● Jun. 10, 2014

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

Get a word

Vocabulary.com logo
by dictionary.com

Join 14,000,000 vocabulary learners

Start learning new words today on VocabTrainer.
You'll remember them forever.

Start training