Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 206 5 e Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Let contain observations through time . In the Gaussian moving-average process of order one, the innovations inare independent of . Hence the conditional expectation is the constant mean. For known parameters, the forecast and its mean squared prediction error areThe mean prediction error itself is zero; the requested uncertainty is naturally interpreted as expected squared error. Plugging in the fit gives forecast , mean squared error , and root mean squared error about .
The usual naive time-series forecast repeats . Its unconditional expected squared error issince . ThusConditional on , the naive error is , explaining directly why the conditional-mean forecast is better under squared-error loss. These are fitted-model calculations that ignore parameter-estimation uncertainty. Estimating the unknown mean from the past adds its estimation mean squared error to the seven-step forecast risk; the printed summary does not provide a complete assessment of that extra uncertainty. This is distinct from claiming a signed mean error as a measure of forecasting accuracy.