Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 48 1 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Put and integrate by parts using . The exponential cutoff has derivative , so the endpoint at infinity vanishes and the lower endpoint givesWith this becomesThe mass of the transformed integral lies at , whereTo control this asymptotic expansion, split at and . On the central interval the geometric-series remainder is bounded by , whose integral against is finite. The lower tail has length and denominator at least ; the upper tail is exponentially small in , with the original denominator at least one. The omitted tails of the logarithmic moments are likewise negligible. Thus extending the moments to is justified.
The Gamma function gives , and the first logarithmic moment is , with Euler's constant. ThereforeThis is the moving Gumbel cutoff in an inverse-power tail: replacing the original cutoff by a sharp step at gives the first term, but its smooth transition supplies the Euler-constant correction.