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FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS
Intuitively Understand Maximum Likelihood
Use simple, everyday examples to understand the fundamental concept so that you can even explain it to your grandmother.
There is a lot of jargon that comes with data science and machine learning. Often, it takes a while to really understand some concepts that are often masked by formal definitions and mathematical equations. Allegedly, according to Einstein,
“You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother."
Maximum likelihood is one of the two fundamental approaches (the other being least squares estimation) to estimate parameters in machine learning and many new methods are inspired from these two.
Despite this, many courses and books explaining Maximum Likelihood fail to make it obvious that the technique is just common sense. My experience was no different when I first learned it (more than a decade ago). However, you will, after reading this post, have a better learning experience. I also believe that after going through this post, you will understand the concept of maximum likelihood so well that you could even explain it to your grandmother. Let’s dive in.
