Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 ib Paper 4 19H Solution 2026-10-14
A Bayes estimator minimizes the integrated loss function under the prior and sampling distribution. For a nonnegative loss, Tonelli's theorem and the posterior distribution give the risk decompositionwhere is the marginal density. Thus choosing, for each observed , a measurable minimizer of the posterior expected loss minimizes the integrated risk. Observations of marginal probability zero do not affect the rule.
Here the likelihood is and the prior is on positive parameters. Put . Their product is , and . The marginal density and posterior are thereforeThis Gamma-exponential conjugacy calculation gives a Gamma distribution with shape and rate . It is the posterior, rather than the prior alone, which determines both requested estimators.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ii Paper 3 28J b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
Multiplying the likelihood by the gamma distribution prior density givesThus Gamma-exponential conjugacy giveswhere the second parameter is the rate. Under squared-error loss, the Bayes estimator under squared error loss is the posterior mean, hence