Past exam of the mathematical and Computational Biology course of the University of Cambridge / 2024 / Paper 2 / B4 / d

The retained mean conditional-product log score, $-74.89$, is higher than the observed-pattern score, $-102.14$, because sampled patterns can improve agreement between neighbouring CpG sites while tolerating some observational errors. The observation-matching pattern maximizes the observation likelihood function alone, whereas this score also rewards the assumed spatial structure, and its posterior mean is not its maximum.