Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2026 / iii / Paper 210 / 2

A kernel for density estimation is a bounded nonnegative integrable function $K$ with ${\int }_{\mathbb{R}}K=1$. Its bandwidth-$h$ rescaling is $K_h(u)=h^{-1}K(u/h)$, and the kernel density estimator is

Fix $x$ and put $V_i=K_h(x-X_i)$. Since $K$ vanishes outside $[-1,1]$,The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality and variance additivity for independent random variables giveNonnegativity also gives $\mathbb{E}|V_1-\mathbb{E}{V}_1|\le 2\mathbb{E}{V}_1\le 4\Vert K{\Vert }_{\infty }{f}_h(x)$. Taking the better estimate at each $x$ and applying Tonelli theorem proves

For nonnegative $a,b$ and $0\le \theta \le 1$, $\min a,b\le a^{\theta }{b}^{1-\theta }$. Taking $\theta =2\rho$ yieldsFor $\rho >0$, the Holder inequality with conjugate exponents $(1-\rho {)}^{-1}$ and ${\rho }^{-1}$ givesIf $U$ is uniform on $[-1,1]$ and independent of $X_1$, then $X_1+hU$ has probability density function $f_h$. Sincethe last integral is at most $(1+h{)}^{\delta }\int (1+|x|{)}^{\delta }f(x)dx$. Substitution proves the second displayed bound. The case $\rho =0$ is the first bound integrated using $\int f_h=1$ and follows directly.