Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2016/iii/paper-206/1/c/solution

For a new independent tumour grown for ten days in B, use . Its fitted mean is
Write . The prediction interval in a normal linear model is
where and is the indicated Student's t-distribution quantile. The design information needed to evaluate is not supplied, so a fully numerical interval cannot be recovered from the coefficient standard errors alone: the coefficient covariances are also needed.
To prove coverage, write , with independent of the original sample. The error has a normal distribution with mean zero and variance . By the joint distribution of least-squares and variance estimators, and is independent of ; it is also independent of . Hence the pivotal quantity
Consequently , which is exactly the claimed prediction interval coverage. This is repeated-sampling coverage conditional on the design, assuming the model; it need not hold conditional on the particular observed training responses. The extra represents new-observation noise and must not be omitted as in a mean confidence interval.

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