The Bayesian "star paradox" persists for long finite sequences
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Updated: Jul 17, 2026

A Novel Bayesian Change-point Algorithm for Genome-wide Analysis of Diverse ChIPseq Data Types
Published on: December 10, 2012
Mike Steel1, Frederick A Matsen
1Biomathematics Research Centre, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. m.steel@math.canterbury.ac.nz
Abstract:
The "star paradox" in phylogenetics is the tendency for a particular resolved tree to be sometimes strongly supported even when the data is generated by an unresolved ("star") tree. There have been contrary claims as to whether this phenomenon persists when very long sequences are considered. This note settles one aspect of this debate by proving mathematically that the chance that a resolved tree could be strongly supported stays above some strictly positive number, even as the length of the sequences becomes very large.
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