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Figure 5 | BMC Evolutionary Biology

Figure 5

From: Inferring ancestral states without assuming neutrality or gradualism using a stable model of continuous character evolution

Figure 5

Slice sampling. An example of slice sampling updating the value of the focal node from Figure 4(A) from θ i to θ i ' . First, the conditional probability that the value of the evolving character at the focal node is equal to θ i - given the other ancestral states and stable model parameters - is calculated. A random number y is drawn from the uniform distribution between zero and this conditional probability (marked with a dotted line). The set of possible values of θ i ' is estimated by bracketing regions around the modes of the distribution for which the conditional probability is greater than y (solid lines and shaded region of the distribution). The new value θ i ' is drawn as a uniform random variable from this set.

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