With unknown independent covariate and centered error distributions, take the regular mean-preserving error tangent space, let , and . Under , and finite second moments, orthogonal projection removes from . Thus the efficient score and efficient information are and . The reduction to is valid for a normal distribution of errors or for constant , but need not hold otherwise. Centered covariates and logistic distribution errors give the counterexample .
Now . With and the location score , differentiation of the log-likelihood gives
Take the usual regularity conditions and so that this score function belongs to L2 space.
For the specified nuisance statistical path, differentiating at zero gives the score function . Normalization requires . There is a second constraint: the statistical path must preserve the model's zero error expected value. Thus
This constraint follows from being a path through the model, rather than from normalization alone. For a centered symmetric logistic distribution, for example, is bounded and has zero expected value, but ; it would not preserve the mean.
For any , independence implies
All these products are integrable by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, since is square-integrable. Thus every such error-density score function is orthogonal to every . Covariate-density nuisance score functions are also orthogonal to these functions, since . This is the mean-preserving error tangent space orthogonality used in the final calculation.
First use the additional admitted form of the efficient score. Write and let . The difference is the orthogonal projection onto the nuisance tangent space. Part (c) makes every orthogonal to that space. Therefore, for all ,
The function in braces belongs to L2 space; choosing it as shows it vanishes -almost everywhere. Hence the required conditional deduction is
Under the regular tail condition at both infinities, integration by parts gives , and the formula becomes . This also confirms the sign.
The admitted product form is an extra restriction; it does not follow for every independent-error regression model. To locate the restriction precisely, suppose the error-density nuisance statistical paths preserve both normalization and mean to first order. Their closed mean-preserving error tangent space is . The full nuisance tangent space is the orthogonal sum of this space and the centered functions of .
For completeness, bounded functions satisfying the two constraints are dense in the error space. Truncate an arbitrary element, subtract its expected value, and then subtract a multiple of a fixed bounded centered function with . Such a exists by truncating , since . The correction coefficients tend to zero by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, so the corrected truncations converge in L2 space.
Let . With and , the orthogonal projection of onto the error nuisance space is ; its projection onto the covariate nuisance space is zero. Thus the general efficient score in independent-error regression is
The orthogonality of the two terms gives the displayed efficient information. For a normal distribution of the error, , so this reduces to the admitted formula. It also does so when is constant.
A concrete counterexample to the generality of the admission is , with uniform on and independent standard logistic distribution error. Here and , so the actual efficient score is . It cannot equal because is not constant. This score function is already orthogonal to every nuisance score function: its factor is centered against error-only directions, and its factor is centered against covariate-only directions. The requested formula is valid under its stated additional admission, with the general independent-error formula above explaining its limits.
Let be independent standard logistic random variables and define the latent variable
Set exactly when . If is the logistic cumulative distribution function, its symmetry and the identity give
which is precisely the fitted logistic regression.
For , the likelihood ratio is
which is increasing in . Thus the logistic location family has a monotone likelihood ratio in .
The upper-tail rejection probability is increasing in the location parameter, since with having the standard logistic distribution. Hence for the critical value from part (i),
The test has size for the composite null.
Now fix any alternative . The Neyman-Pearson lemma applied to the simple hypotheses and says that this same upper-tail test is most powerful among all tests whose rejection probability at is at most . Every test of size at most for the composite null satisfies that restriction. The upper-tail test is therefore most powerful at every , so it is the uniformly most powerful upper-tail test for a logistic location.
The likelihood ratio of the simple alternative to the simple null is
This is a strictly increasing function of . By the Neyman-Pearson lemma, the most powerful test therefore rejects for . The logistic distribution has
The size condition gives
Because the distribution is continuous, no boundary randomization is needed. The most powerful size- test is therefore
Uniformly most powerful upper-tail test for a logistic location Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
For one observation from the logistic distribution, the size- test of against rejects when