Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 ib Paper 4 19H ii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
This relative absolute-error loss weights each parameter by . Its posterior expected loss isThe effective density for the Bayes estimator under weighted absolute loss is proportional to , hence an exponential distribution of rate . Its median solves .
More explicitly, for , differentiating the split integrals at gives and . For , the loss has derivative , so its minimum cannot lie there. The unique global minimum is thereforeThis is the weighted posterior median; the ordinary median of the Gamma posterior would minimize unweighted absolute loss and would give a different answer.