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Maximum likelihood estimation is a method of statistical estimation: within a specified statistical model, choose the statistical parameter values that maximize the likelihood function of the observed data. For a parameter set $\Theta$ and observations $x$, its exact requirement isThe equality requires an attained, finite maximum; a supremum approached only at an excluded boundary is not enough. The resulting rule is a maximum-likelihood estimator. The likelihood function uses a probability mass function for discrete data and a probability density function for continuous data. See MIT 18.05, Reading 10b, sections 3 and 3.2.

The direction of the comparison is the interesting part: hold the observations fixed and vary the statistical parameter. Ten independent Bernoulli trials with eight successes and two failures give the maximum-likelihood estimate $\hat{p}=0.8$, as derived in log-likelihood. This chooses the member of the statistical model that assigns the greatest mass to that outcome. It does not assert an $80\%$ posterior probability that this parameter value is true. Bayesian statistics combines the same likelihood function with a prior distribution to obtain a posterior distribution; maximum a posteriori estimation maximizes that posterior mass or density instead.

The method turns many fitting tasks into one maximization problem. In the normal distribution model with known variance, it recovers the sample mean and ordinary least squares, while binomial regression and Poisson regression use different sampling assumptions to build their own likelihood functions. The log-likelihood turns independent contributions into a sum, exposing score equations and observed information. A peak's location gives an estimate; its shape records how much the observed data distinguish nearby parameter values.

Existence, uniqueness, bias, and statistical consistency are separate questions. Normal mean and variance maximum-likelihood estimators include a variance estimate with bias, likelihood supremum at an excluded boundary gives nonexistence, and the Neyman-Scott incidental parameter problem gives inconsistency. The usual asymptotic normality of a maximum likelihood estimator requires assumptions: a consistent estimator at an interior true parameter in a fixed finite-dimensional model with identifiability, sufficient smoothness and control of log-likelihood derivatives, and finite nonsingular Fisher information. A common parameter-independent support of a probability distribution is part of a standard sufficient framework; see Rigollet, MIT 18.650, Maximum Likelihood Estimation, slides 22-23. This is a description of the regular setting, not a complete theorem's hypotheses. The exact endpoint limit for a shifted exponential distribution shows why changing support can produce a different rate and a nonnormal limit. These properties do not follow just from maximizing a function.

In his 1922 paper in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions A, R. A. Fisher explicitly distinguished likelihood from probability and described choosing the parameter values with greatest likelihood. Section 6 also discusses comparing likelihoods after giving the maximum value one, the convention used in the figures here. See Fisher, On the Mathematical Foundations of Theoretical Statistics, section 6, pp. 326-328, DOI 10.1098/rsta.1922.0009.

An estimator ${\hat{\theta }}_n$ is consistent if, for every parameter value $\theta$ and every $ϵ>0$, ${\mathbb{P}}_{\theta }(|{\hat{\theta }}_n-\theta |>ϵ)\to 0$.

For the proposed root criterion, fix $ϵ>0$. Convergence in probability at the two points givesOn this event the intermediate value theorem gives a zero between the two points. Since the zero is unique, it is ${\hat{\theta }}_n$. Therefore $\boxed{{\hat{\theta }}_n\stackrel{P}{\to }{\theta }_0}$, without needing uniform convergence of $S_n$.

For independent $N({\theta }_0,1)$ observations, the log-likelihood has derivative $n({\bar{X}}_n-\theta )$ and negative second derivative $-n$. Its unique maximizer is ${\hat{\theta }}_n={\bar{X}}_n$. Apply the criterion to $S_n(\theta )=\theta -{\bar{X}}_n$: the strong law of large numbers gives the limit $S(\theta )=\theta -{\theta }_0$, with the required signs. Hence the maximum-likelihood estimator is consistent.

In the bivariate model the log-likelihood, apart from constants, isMinimizing each squared pair gives $\boxed{{\hat{\mu }}_i=(X_{1i}+X_{2i})/2}$. Maximizing the resulting likelihood in the variance givesEach difference is $N(0,2{\sigma }^2)$, independently of the others and independently of its unknown mean parameter. Thus the strong law of large numbers gives ${\hat{\sigma }}^2\to {\sigma }^2/2$ in probability, not ${\sigma }^2$. This is the Neyman-Scott incidental parameter problem: the number of nuisance means grows with the sample size, but each mean is estimated from only two observations. The usual fixed-dimensional likelihood consistency theory therefore does not apply. The corrected estimator $2{\hat{\sigma }}^2$ is consistent.