Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 27 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Where the moment-generating function is finite in a neighborhood of zero, define the cumulant-generating function and the th cumulant by . Differentiation givessince . Thus the first two cumulants are the mean and variance.
Conditional on , independence gives . Summing over the Poisson distribution yieldsHence the compound Poisson cumulants giveFor the moment statements, finite second moments suffice even when a moment-generating function does not exist near zero: conditioning gives . This distinguishes the raw second moment from the variance of an individual claim.
For a single flood, the law of total expectation and law of total variance similarly giveCondition on the number of floods and apply the same laws once more. All floods have these moments and are independent of , so the annual total satisfiesThe additional term is the variation in the number of entire flood clusters; it would be lost by treating individual claims as an ordinary Poisson stream.
For the annual count , its probability generating function isThis is the nested Poisson flood count. Differentiating, or conditioning on , gives and . Thus is not Poisson when , since its variance exceeds its mean. If either parameter is zero it is identically zero, a degenerate Poisson distribution.
Let be the number of valid claims in flood . Independent validity marking gives . Its generating function isso Poisson thinning gives . With validity independent also of claim amount, each claim contributes expected paid amount . Therefore the annual expected payment is . The independent-mark assumption is needed for this multiplication; a size-dependent invalidity rule would require the joint expected value of amount and validity instead.