Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2018 / Paper 1 / 16 / e / Solution

The expected value is not defined: the integral of $yf(y)$ over the positive half-line diverges logarithmically to $+\infty$, and the negative half-line gives $-\infty$. In particular, symmetry alone does not supply a mean. More explicitly,The second moment also diverges because $y^{2}f(y)\to x_0/\pi >0$ as $|y|\to \infty$. ThusThe symmetric Cauchy principal value of the first-moment integral is zero, but it is not an expected value and does not define a variance.