Examining the expression for logarithm of the likelihood, we see thatthe only variable term is. Note that this is the sum of squared errors
multiplied by the negative sign. Thus, maximizing the logarithm of the like-
lihood is the same as minimizing the sum of squared errors. Therefore, in sit-
uations where we make the assumptions as discussed, then the sum of
squaresmultiplied by a negative sign may be used as a proxy for the max-
imumlikelihood.
−
=∑ei
iN
2
136 BACKGROUND MATERIAL