Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 ia Paper 2 11F Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Integrating the uniform density gives . By independence of random variables, . For the remaining expected value, integrate first in :The value at is supplied by continuity. Therefore, with the harmonic number ,
Conditional on one sample point being , it is a maximal external point precisely when none of the other points falls in the upper-right rectangle . Its area is , so its conditional probability of being maximal is . Both and are independent uniform random variables, hence a given point is maximal with probability . Summing their indicator random variables and applying linearity of expectation gives the expected number of coordinatewise maxima:This grows only logarithmically with the sample size, even though all points are potential candidates.