Table 1.

The notation for the observed random variables, latent random variables and parameters of our proposed beta-binomial model. The subscript i refers to the i th sample. Notations are defined for each taxon

Notation	Definition
Yi,j	indicator that the j th read corresponds to the taxon of interest
Wi	observed counts, or observed absolute abundance, of the taxon of interest
Mi	sequencing depth, or total number of counts, across all taxa
Wi/Mi	observed relative abundance of the taxon of interest
Zi	latent relative abundance of the taxon of interest
μi	expected relative abundance of the taxon of interest
ϕi	overdispersion, or within-sample correlation of the taxon of interest