Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2019/iii/paper-219/2/e/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 219 2 e Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-03
Let and draw independently from an importance density . The unbiased estimatorof has one-sample second momentBy the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality,Equality holds precisely when , giving the optimal importance density for a single integralThis 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.
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