Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-probability-statistics-and-options-ii-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2009/s/s2/e/solution
Past exam of the Probability, statistics and options II course of the University of Oxford 2009 S S2 e Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-31
State-dependent execution times can bias the finite set of completed outputs. A simple counterexample takes uniform on two states and , so every proposal is accepted. Suppose processing the first state takes one unit of time and processing the second takes two. Stop at a deadline between one and two units, discarding any unfinished computation. The only possible completed output is the first state; conditional on obtaining a sample, its law is concentrated there rather than uniform.
This demonstrates that a wall-clock cutoff can select outputs according to their processing cost, unlike the fixed proposal budget in (d). It does not imply a permanent asymptotic bias of averages over an indefinitely growing completed sequence: the finite-horizon stopping and censoring are the issue. Without assumptions relating runtime to states, exact finite-sample unbiasedness cannot be guaranteed.
New to topics? Read the docs here!