Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2022 / iii / Paper 219 / 1 / b

Write the Cepheid measurement as $\hat{\mu }=\mu +{ϵ}_{\mu }$, where ${ϵ}_{\mu }\sim N(0,{\sigma }_{\mu }^2)$, and define the calibrated absolute magnitude dataThus $q=(q_1,\dots ,q_K{)}^T$ has a multivariate normal distribution with mean $M_{0}1$ and covariance matrix

The Hubble law and the definition of distance modulus giveConsequently, withthe Hubble-flow observations are independent random variables satisfying $x_i\sim N(M_0-\theta ,{\sigma }_{\mathrm{tot}}^2)$. Apart from a factor independent of the parameters, the joint likelihood function isThe expression extends by continuity to a singular limiting covariance such as ${\sigma }_I=0$.