Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2004/iii/paper-40/4/v/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 40 4 v Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Take , so the proposal is the uniform distribution on , with probability density function . Symmetry of the standard Cauchy distribution givesThus the proposed expression is exactly the unbiased importance sampling estimator of this complementary integral:It has finite variance because is bounded on . Explicitly,These follow from the antiderivatives of and . The target itself is . At it is exactly without simulation; for negative the printed uniform-interval construction must be changed.
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