Solution

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

Take , so the proposal is the uniform distribution on , with probability density function . Symmetry of the standard Cauchy distribution gives
Thus 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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