Maximum likelihood

Maximum likelihood is a way to find the most probable explanation for an event or observation. Imagine you have a jar of candy, and you don't know what types of candy are inside, but you want to figure it out. You could start by guessing a few types of candy, and then you would take out one piece of candy at a time and write down what type it is.

But what if you could use the information from the candies you've already taken out to make a better guess for the next one? This is what maximum likelihood does. It uses the information you've collected so far to make a better guess for the remaining candies.

In more technical terms, maximum likelihood is a statistical method that estimates the parameters of a probability distribution by finding the set of parameter values that make the observed data most probable. It assumes that the underlying distribution is known but the parameters are not, and uses the data to find the most likely values for those parameters.

In simpler terms, maximum likelihood helps us to find the most likely explanation for something by using the information we already have.