The normal-model log-likelihood is up to a constant. Differentiating gives the maximum-likelihood estimators
Let . The fitted component and residual are orthogonal jointly normal projections and hence independent. Therefore
The prediction error is normal with mean zero and variance , and is independent of the residual variance estimate. Dividing by the independent estimated standard deviation yields
Thus the prediction interval in a normal linear model is
The extra includes the new observation's independent noise; omitting it would give a confidence interval for its conditional mean instead.
Let be the orthogonal projection onto the design column space. Linear transformations of the Gaussian errors give
The residual distribution is a singular multivariate normal supported on the orthogonal complement of that column space. Their cross-covariance is . Joint normality even makes the two vectors independent.
Order the observations as . The two normal linear models have design matrices
Removing each row mean leaves the information for the common slope equal to the sum of within-row squared fertilizer deviations. These sums are and , respectively. Therefore
The second design estimates the slope four times as precisely in variance terms.
The observed data in the second design are fitted exactly by . With , the no-fertilizer total forecast is
The future four independent errors contribute variance . Parameter-estimation uncertainty contributes , so the prediction-error variance is , not merely the variance of the estimated mean. Normally, with , the prediction interval in a normal linear model is
Here the printed data have zero residual and hence . The formal plug-in interval collapses to , exhibiting zero-residual degeneracy of regression prediction. Under the stated model with unknown positive variance, this exact fit is a probability-zero sample and the Studentized statistic is undefined at it; the collapsed expression is not evidence that future yield is certain. No positive-width numerical 95% interval can be obtained from these exact data by the usual residual-variance method without extra variance information or an explicit observation-rounding model.
For a new independent tumour grown for ten days in B, use . Its fitted mean is
Write . The prediction interval in a normal linear model is
where 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 quantity
Consequently , 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.
A prediction interval is a pair of statistics such that, for every and , an independent future response at the specified input satisfies
In the normal linear model, assume has full column rank and write
For a new observation
independent of the training sample, the prediction error is
The two terms on the right are independent centered normal random variables, while
Consequently, with the new-point regression leverage
we have
The assumption in the question gives
This variable is independent of ; it is also independent of the new error . Therefore it is independent of the standardized prediction error, and the defining normal-over-chi-square representation of Student's t-distribution gives
If is the corresponding upper quantile, symmetry yields
Solving these inequalities for proves that the prediction interval in a normal linear model is
Its center and endpoints depend only on the observed data and , and the pivotal calculation proves the required coverage uniformly in the unknown and .