Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2019 / ib / Paper 4 / 19H / a / Solution

Apart from terms independent of $\beta$, the Gaussian log-likelihood isDifferentiating with respect to $\beta$ givesThe unique zero, and hence the maximum-likelihood estimate, isThe same value minimizes the residual sum of squares ${\sum }_i(Y_i-\beta x_i{)}^2$, since maximizing the Gaussian likelihood for fixed ${\sigma }^2$ is equivalent to minimizing this sum. It is therefore also the least-squares estimator.