Likelihood (eikos, versimilis) captures the idea that something is likely to happen. As a formal concept, it has appeared in jurisprudence, commerce and scholasticism long before it was given a rigorous mathematical foundation.[1]
Likelihood is a measure of how likely an event is, as can be expressed in terms of, for example, probability or odds in favor.
In statistics, a likelihood function is a function of the parameters of a statistical model, defined as follows: the likelihood of a set of parameter values given some observed outcomes is equal to the probability of those observed outcomes given those parameter values. Likelihood functions play a key role in statistical inference, especially methods of estimating a parameter from a set of statistics.
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