Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2016/iii/paper-208/4/a/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 208 4 a Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Draw independent uniformly on , and setThis is the Box-Muller transform. The endpoint has probability zero; an implementation should avoid evaluating its logarithm.
For , , so has density . It is independent of the angle, which has a uniform distribution on , and their joint density is . Transforming to Cartesian coordinates divides by the polar-coordinate Jacobian , yieldingThus the outputs are independent random variables with the standard normal distribution, proving the algorithm.
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