Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2019/iii/paper-219/2/e/solution

Let and draw independently from an importance density . The unbiased estimator
of has one-sample second moment
By the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality,
Equality holds precisely when , giving the optimal importance density for a single integral
This is circular in practice: constructing and normalizing requires detailed knowledge of the posterior and the expectation of . Here log masses are positive, so the unknown normalizer is the posterior mean being estimated. It is also optimal only for this one integral, not for general posterior summaries.

New to topics? Read the docs here!