Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE): The Intuition
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Likelihood 1 - Intro to Statistics
In frequentist inference, a likelihood function is a function of the parameters of a statistical model, given specific observed data. Likelihood functions play a key role in frequentist inference, especially methods of estimating a parameter from a set of statistics. In informal contexts, "likelihood" is often used as a synonym for "probability". In mathematical statistics, the two terms have different meanings. Probability in this mathematical context describes the plausibility of a random outcome, given a model parameter value, without reference to any observed data. Likelihood describes the plausibility of a model parameter value, given specific observed data.