Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematical-and-computational-biology-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2025/paper-2/2/e/solution

Let be the hidden state. With the usual convention and , the Markov property and the conditional independence of emissions factor the joint probability as
The requested state-path probability after observing the complete data is the corresponding conditional probability:
Here the forward algorithm and backward algorithm give the same normalizer at any interior time,
There is no extra factor : it is already included in . If an unconditioned joint probability with the observations is intended, it is the numerator alone. Summing the boxed expression over all gives one.

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