Reference no: EM132850602
A small ecotourism park in Costa Rica is interested in promoting wildlife viewing opportunities on its property to prospective visitors. The park manager sets out a trail camera across a hiking trail to capture images of wildlife using the trail. After 14 days, the camera was collected and images were downloaded. The owner summarized the number of different species of wild mammals caught on camera each day:
[7, 11, 10, 12, 6, 5, 5, 9, 8, 4, 7, 7, 9, 6]. For promotional purposes, the owner wants to advertise the average number of different mammal species observed per day. She wants to use the best estimate possible from her data. She emails a local university student, who mentions in a return email that the "best" estimate is the estimate that maximizes the likelihood function:
a. The park manager politely responds to the student's email with a question: "What in the world does this mean, in English?" Using the equation above, explain the basic idea behind maximization of the likelihood function, in English.
b. What probability distribution (of those we've studied) seems most suitable for this problem? Explain.