Probability and Statistics

Abstract

AbstractProbability calculus involves computing the probabilities of random or stochastic events, defining probability distributions, and performing manipulations using random variables. Statistics is concerned with presentation, analysis, and inference based on data obtained from experiments with an element of randomness. In a random setting events may happen or not, and defining the conditions of experiments involves assigning probabilities to events, for example P(A) = 0.3. The probability of an event is a measure of the frequency of its occurrence under repeated, controlled conditions. Large collections of probability distributions associated with typical physical or biological experiments with a random component, as well as the rules of probability calculus are presented in large number of references, for example [37, 78, 87, 134, 144, 212, 275, 297]. In this chapter we discuss several topics in probability calculus and statistics, to be used later in the processing of bioinformatic data.KeywordsMarkov ChainProbability Density FunctionExpectation MaximizationFisher InformationExpectation Maximization AlgorithmThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.