Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 42 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Put , and . Apart from a data-only constant, the log-likelihood isThe natural parameters in the ambient two-parameter exponential family of normal distributions are and , restricted to the nonaffine curve , . Its parametrization has rank one. Thus this is a one-dimensional curved exponential family inside a two-dimensional full family.
The Fisher-Neyman factorization theorem makes sufficient. For two samples , the parameter-dependent part of their log density ratio is . A polynomial in is constant on only if both nonconstant coefficients vanish. The likelihood-ratio criterion for minimal sufficiency therefore proves is minimal sufficient.
Write with independent . Since , has a probability distribution independent of : it is an ancillary statistic. The denominator is nonzero almost surely. The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality gives ; on the requested positive branch, and .
The likelihood equation is . Its positive root isThere is exactly one positive root. The sign of the score function changes from positive to negative there, and at both ends of when , so it is the unique maximum-likelihood estimator. The useful identities areSubstitution yields, dropping the constant ,Differentiating twice and using at the fitted value gives the observed informationThe scalar P-star approximation uses . Consequently, with its normalizing factor explicitly retained,Here is chosen to make the density integrate to one, and is independent of . To see this without assuming an approximate normalizer, defineThe integral is finite and positive, and normalized is exactlyIndeed .
There is a direct check of this conditional scale density in a curved Gaussian family. In polar coordinates , the sample density times volume element is proportional to . Conditioning on fixes . The remaining angular factor is independent of , while . Thus the exact conditional radial density has the same normalized form. For the positive ancillary branch fixes the positive sign and the same one-dimensional radial calculation applies. In this scale model the normalized expression equals the exact conditional density, not merely its leading approximation.
For , compute its conditional distribution by one-dimensional quadrature:It is zero for ; with the conditional-density calculation just given, this normalized formula is exact for almost every admissible . Numerically, subtract the maximum log integrand before exponentiating to avoid overflow. The sampling probability still depends on the stipulated true ; replacing it by a fitted value would be a separate plug-in inference step.