Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2011 / Paper 1 / 12 / h / Solution

The time already elapsed since the noise is $32$ minutes. Conditional on a particular noise time $T=t$ and on still being in progress, memorylessness of the exponential distribution givesThis law does not depend on $t$. Averaging over the conditional distribution of $T$ therefore leaves the same remaining-time law. HenceThe elapsed $32$ minutes are not subtracted from the original mean; the exponential residual lifetime has the same mean after any elapsed duration.