Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2005/iii/paper-47/1/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 47 1 Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
A real weakly stationary process has finite second moments, a time-independent mean , and autocovariance function depending only on the lag. Use the angular-frequency conventionThe time-series spectral density is nonnegative and integrates to . The displayed Fourier series is ordinarily justified by . More generally, weak stationarity gives a spectral measure of a stationary time series, not necessarily a spectral density. If a spectral density exists without this summability, its Fourier inversion can be understood using Fejér sums, which converge in and at its Lebesgue points. Thus spectral density existence should not be inferred from weak stationarity alone.
A white noise process has mean zero and . Neither independence nor a normal distribution is needed for this second-order definition. Its autocovariance function is zero at nonzero lags, soFor a real absolutely summable filter , the series defining has mean-square convergence: its tails have norm at most . Its mean is , andThe sum is absolutely convergent, since by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. It depends only on , proving that the output is a weakly stationary process. Substitute the spectral integral for and interchange the sums and integral, justified by and . This givesBecause the coefficients are real, the two factors are complex conjugates. Hence the spectral density transformation under a linear filter isFor complex coefficients the same formula holds with the conjugate-covariance convention.
Applying this result to the order-two moving-average model yieldsEquivalently, its nonzero autocovariances are , and , together with .
For the order-one moving-average process, invert its filter by a geometric series. The required coefficients areThey are absolutely summable for . Direct cancellation giveswith mean-square convergence. Thus the inverse filter recovers exactly the original white noise process, including its variance; it is an invertible time-series representation.
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