What is a likelihood? (Bayesian modelling)

Likelihood: The probability that an event will occur. I am trying to tighten up my understanding of likelihood in the context of bayesian modeling. When building a bayesian model from scratch, why do you have to choose a likelihood function in the same way you specify priors? Specifically: how does a likelihood function let you ‘fit’ a bayesian model to empirical data? I have done some bayesian model fitting in previous research:...

December 14, 2023 · 8 min · Hamish Gibbs