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

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Example Sentences

The impact of these advances is huge, especially in research or clinical trials, where maximum likelihood of the right diagnosis is necessary.

From Salon

In my case, the company said while the “maximum likelihood estimate” is that I’m 13 percent sub-Saharan African, I could also be as low as 3 percent or as high as 23 percent.

From Seattle Times

MEGA5: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis using maximum likelihood, evolutionary distance, and maximum parsimony methods.

From Nature

The run with maximum likelihood was used to assign individual genotypes into groups.

From Nature

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

From Nature