Challenging problem comparing categories...
Hi all,
I have kind of a tricky problem:confused: ... hope someone can help me!
Suppose a couple of ethologists checked the probability distributions of categories of bear in some areas (let's say 50), for example:
| brown | black | polar | grizzly | other |
| area 1 | 0.11 | 0.23 | 0.00 | 0.49 | 0.17 |
| area 2 | 0.51 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.39 | 0.10 |
| area 3 | 0.06 | 0.00 | 0.94 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
| area 50 | 0.30 | 0.18 | 0.02 | 0.19 | 0.31 |
The distributions within a category are not necessarily normal (e.g. the polar bear).
Now a remote system tracks a single bear, across a limited number of areas (let's say 4). The system doesn't know which kind of bear it is, so it is unknown to which category it belongs beforehand.
Is there a way to determine the probability and certainty (confidence) the bear will belong to a category, given the areas the bear is found in?
To clarify the reasoning: consider three adjacent areas. The left area has a high occurrence of brown bears, the right area a high occurrence of black bears and the middle area both black and brown are equally distributed. Suppose a bear moves around only in the middle and right areas, it would seem the probability that bear is a black bear increases. But how to calculate this?
I was first thinking of using a Wilcoxon Signed test for each category combination, or should I use Fisher's exact test... and some post-hoc test ?
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!
Re: Challenging problem comparing categories...
1-You can normalize each row of this table so that sum of prob values=1 for each row.
2-Confidence intervals are based on probabilities already on the table
3-There are more advanced methods that instead of this table you can have probabilities contour maps on a real 2D map so that movement of bears and finding probabilities can be examined more easily.
Re: Challenging problem comparing categories...
@MaxJasper...eh... thanks I guess.
1 - obviously, this is already the case
2 - obviously, for bear types in an area. not for the unknown bear across areas
3 - probabilities contour maps are an excellent answer to something I didn't ask