Maximum likelihood estimation and natural pairwise estimating equations are identical for three sequences and a symmetric 2-state substitution model

Asger Hobolth and Carsten Wiuf

Theoretical Population Biology, 2024, vol. 156, issue C, 1-4

Abstract: Consider the problem of estimating the branch lengths in a symmetric 2-state substitution model with a known topology and a general, clock-like or star-shaped tree with three leaves. We show that the maximum likelihood estimates are analytically tractable and can be obtained from pairwise sequence comparisons. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this property does not generalize to larger state spaces, more complex models or larger trees. Our arguments are based on an enumeration of the free parameters of the model and the dimension of the minimal sufficient data vector. Our interest in this problem arose from discussions with our former colleague Freddy Bugge Christiansen.

Keywords: Maximum likelihood estimation; Pairwise comparisons; Phylogenetic trees (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040580923000837
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:156:y:2024:i:c:p:1-4

DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2023.12.004

Access Statistics for this article

Theoretical Population Biology is currently edited by Jeremy Van Cleve

More articles in Theoretical Population Biology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().