Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-statistics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2017/2/b/solution
Past exam of the statistics course of the University of Oxford 2017 2 b Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
Let . For the exponential distribution with mean , the likelihood function is on positive observations. Fix any . The alternative-to-null likelihood ratio isSince , this is strictly decreasing in . The Neyman-Pearson lemma says to reject for small . Under the null hypothesis, the given sum rule yields , where the second argument is a rate, and henceLet be the lower quantile of this chi-squared distribution. The required critical region isIts test size is exactly because the null distribution is continuous. Its cutoff is the same for every , so it is simultaneously most powerful against every such value: it is a uniformly most powerful test. Equivalently, reject if is below the lower quantile of the specified gamma distribution.
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