A study on the degree of relationship between two individuals

The paper studies the likely degree of relationship between two individuals who could possibly be half sibs. The possible common ancestor was dead, which further complicated the problem. The model used was devised by Thompson [in Rao and Chakraborty (eds): Handbook of Statistics, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1991] and establishes a correspondence between the possible degree of relationship and certain feasible probability distributions on the number of identical by descent genes. Two statistical approaches are considered: the classical one, in which the maximum likelihood estimation for the parameters of Thompson's model are obtained, and the Bayesian one, in which the test of the hypothesis of half sibs is accompanied by a robustness study.