Likelihood function of the WMAP TT+TE data as a function of the basic parameters in the power‐law ΛCDM WMAP model (﹩\Omega _{b}h^{2}﹩, ﹩\Omega _{m}h^{2}﹩, h, A, ﹩n_{s}﹩ and τ.) The points are the binned marginalized likelihood from the Markov chain, and the solid curve is an Edgeworth expansion of the Markov chain's points. The marginalized likelihood function is nearly Gaussian for all of the parameters except for τ. The dashed lines show the maximum‐likelihood values of the global six‐dimensional fit. Since the peak in the likelihood, ﹩x_{\mathrm{ML}\,}﹩, is not the same as the expectation value of the likelihood function, x, the dashed line does not lie at the center of the projected likelihood.