Lesson 8 exercises

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Exercise 8.1

Why couldn’t we use scipy.optimize.least_squares() on the Singer data for mRNA counts?

Exercise 8.2

Why is the likelihood function not a probability?

Exercise 8.3

You may have heard that curve fitting involves “minimizing the sum of the square of the residuals.” If indeed finding the MLE for the pertinent parameters is equivalent to minimizing the sum of the square of the residuals, what underlying assumptions are there in the statistical model?

Exercise 8.4

Describe in words the difference between a parametric and nonparametric bootstrap for computing confidence intervals of maximum likelihood estimates.

Exercise 8.5

Write down any questions or points of confusion that you have.