Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-statistics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2014/1/b/i/solution

Define and , with . The unrestricted maximum-likelihood estimates are and . Under the null hypothesis, maximizing the normal distribution's likelihood over the remaining variance gives
because the cross term vanishes when . At either fitted variance, the exponential factor in the likelihood function is , so it cancels in the ratio:
The standardized test statistic is
The sample variance uses divisor , whereas the maximum-likelihood estimate uses divisor ; this explains the in the final expression. Under a nondegenerate normal distribution, with probability one.

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