Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2022 iii Paper 210 4 Solution 2026-09-28
The pushforward measure of under isThe Lebesgue decomposition theorem says that for sigma-finite measures there are unique measures and such that
For a convex lower-semicontinuous function with , choose any measure dominating probability measures , put and , and define the f-divergenceusing the lower-semicontinuous perspective value when . This definition includes the singular part and is independent of .
To prove the data processing inequality for f-divergences, let and use . The densities of and , pulled back to , are and . Since the perspectiveis jointly convex, conditional Jensen inequality givesIntegration proves
Fix a probability measure . Let be uniform on and, conditionally on , draw from . Compare this joint law with the reference law under which is uniform and independent of . Forthe target expectation is , while its reference expectation isbecause the form a partition. Its reference variance is . The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality applied to the likelihood ratio givesThe last divergence separates over :Taking the infimum over all probability measures proves the required inequality.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 iii Paper 210 4 Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
The pushforward measure of under is , defined for byThe Lebesgue decomposition theorem says that if and are sigma-finite measures on the same measurable space, then uniquely
Let be convex with . If dominates the probability distributions , with densities , their f-divergence isusing the lower-semicontinuous perspective convention where . This definition is independent of the dominating measure.
The data processing inequality for f-divergences statesTo prove it, take and let . If and , then the pullbacks of the densities of and with respect to are respectively and . The perspective of a convex function is jointly convex. Conditional Jensen inequality therefore givesIntegration proves the claim.
The Squared Hellinger distance isIf have densities with respect to a sigma-finite measure , this becomes
Fix any probability distribution and set , , and . Applying the data processing inequality to the indicator function of gives the Bernoulli Hellinger boundThe hinted inequality impliesThe function is concave on . Since the form a set partition, , and Jensen inequality givesTaking the infimum over proves the stated inequality.