Likelihood ratio

Written by So8res, et al. last updated
Teaches: Likelihood

Given a piece of evidence  and two hypotheses  and  the likelihood ratio between them is the ratio of the likelihood each hypothesis assigns to 

For example, imagine the evidence is  = "Mr. Boddy was knifed", and the hypotheses are  = "Professor Plum did it" and  = "Mrs. White did it." Let's say that, if Professor Plum were the killer, we're 25% sure he would have used a knife. Let's also say that, if Mrs. White were the killer, there's only a 5% chance she would have used a knife. Then the likelihood ratio of  between  and  is 25/5 = 5, which says that  assigns five times as much likelihood to  as does  which means that the evidence supports the "Plum did it" hypothesis five times as much as it supports the "Mrs. White did it" hypothesis.

A likelihood ratio of 5 denotes relative likelihoods of  Relative likelihoods can be multiplied by odds in order to update those odds, as per Bayes' rule.

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