Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 207 2 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
For the plug-in Neyman allocation, the estimated Bernoulli distribution variances are and , soThis uses the target ratio directly as the allocation odds; a procedure that actively corrects previous allocation imbalances would need an additional rule.
For the randomized play-the-winner rule RPW, return the drawn ball and add one ball of the same treatment after a success or of the opposite treatment after a failure. Treatment 0 has three successes and two failures, and treatment 1 has one success and three failures. The urn therefore has treatment-0 balls and treatment-1 balls. HenceFor dynamic programming with only the final patient left, there is no future value from learning. Independent uniform prior distributions and Beta-binomial conjugacy give posteriors and . Their posterior predictive probabilities of success are and . The optimal terminal action therefore givesThis is optimal for expected successes with no imposed lower bound on the randomization probabilities.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 216 6 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Let . To distinguish the number of posterior draws from the training-sample size, write it as ; in the question's sample notation . The Monte Carlo estimator of the requested posterior mean isFor independent exact posterior draws it is unbiased, andThe features are conditioned on as fixed data. The estimated probability concerns a future genuine banknote under the posterior predictive probability, not an indicator sampled from that predictive distribution.