Past exam of the options II course of the University of Oxford / 2011 / O / O5 / a / Solution

The Gaussian linear model has log likelihood function, up to an additive constant,For each fixed positive ${\sigma }^2$, maximize this by minimizing the residual sum of squares. Differentiation gives the normal equationsThe full column rank of $X$ makes $X^{T}X$ positive definite, hence invertible, soThe quadratic objective is strictly convex, which proves uniqueness. The joint maximum-likelihood estimate has the same coefficient estimate, except on the probability-zero event of an exactly zero residual when the positive-variance likelihood has no finite joint maximizer.