Consistency of Maximum Entropy Principle and Maximum Likelihood Estimation in Traffic Analysis

There are many applications of the Wilson′ s Maximum Entropy Principle in transport modeling, such as the entropy distribution model, entropy assignment model and so on. There also many uses of the Maximum Likelihood Estimation method in transport studies. When we estimate the traffic flow state in some given conditions,oth of the two methods can be used at the same time. In this paper we try to find the relation between the two methods. We give the explanation of the Maximum Entropy Principle by using the Maximum Likelihood Estimation. This shows that the two methods play a same role under the given conditions. Most basic models in transport planning can be deduced by using either of the two methods.