Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 206 1 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
For a new independent tumour grown for ten days in B, use . Its fitted mean isWrite . The prediction interval in a normal linear model iswhere and is the indicated Student's t-distribution quantile. The design information needed to evaluate is not supplied, so a fully numerical interval cannot be recovered from the coefficient standard errors alone: the coefficient covariances are also needed.
To prove coverage, write , with independent of the original sample. The error has a normal distribution with mean zero and variance . By the joint distribution of least-squares and variance estimators, and is independent of ; it is also independent of . Hence the pivotal quantityConsequently , which is exactly the claimed prediction interval coverage. This is repeated-sampling coverage conditional on the design, assuming the model; it need not hold conditional on the particular observed training responses. The extra represents new-observation noise and must not be omitted as in a mean confidence interval.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 ib Paper 2 8H b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
The sample mean has normal distribution because the observations are independent with known variance 1. The pivotal quantity has the standard normal distribution. Consequentlyand inversion gives the confidence intervalReplacing 1.96 by the exact normal quantile gives exact 95% coverage; the printed numerical value gives the usual rounded interval. No variance estimation or Student distribution is needed.