Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2004/iii/paper-40/4/iv/solution

For the standard Cauchy distribution tail, use the indicator
Then is the desired probability, and the ordinary importance sampling estimator is . The proposal must cover the nonzero integrand, namely the upper tail. A proposal restricted to cannot directly estimate this indicator integral; part (v) instead uses a complementary bounded-interval identity.

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