| likelihood | 1. Appearance; show; sign; expression. "What of his heart perceive you in his face By any likelihood he showed to-day ?" (Shak) 2. Likeness; resemblance. "There is no likelihood between pure light and black darkness, or between righteousness and reprobation." (Sir W. Raleigh) 3. Appearance of truth or reality; probability; verisimilitude. Origin: Likely + -hood. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
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| likelihood functions | Functions constructed from a statistical model and a set of observed data which give the probability of that data for various values of the unknown model parameters. Those parameter values that maximise the probability are the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters. (12 Dec 1998) |