Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2008/paper-1/15/b/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2008 Paper 1 15 b Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-20
For an integrable discrete random variable, its expectation and variance are and , respectively. The first formula requires for a finite ordinary mean; the variance may be infinite. A probability density function gives .
Conditioning on and using independence givesThe interchange is justified by Tonelli's theorem, since all integrands are nonnegative. Consequently has an absolutely continuous distribution, withIts integral is . This is the convolution of independent random variables, specifically a Gaussian smoothing of an integer-valued distribution for the given normal density. The specified weights are normalized because .
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