Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2005/iii/paper-43/4/i/solution

Let . The conditional joint likelihood function of the observed counts is
The prior is a gamma distribution with shape two and rate . Multiplication by its density gives the unnormalized posterior density . Normalizing with the gamma function yields
Thus Poisson-gamma conjugacy gives . Conditional on and the past data, the next count has mean , so the law of total expectation gives
With and prior mean , this is exactly
Here , , and the credibility factor increases to one as the number of observed years grows. The denominator uses the prior rate and total exposure ; it does not add two to the exposure when adding the prior shape.

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