Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 iii Paper 223 1 b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Let replacement tolerance mean the greatest number of observations that can be replaced while the estimator remains bounded. For , a sample with zeros and copies of is within replacements of both the all-zero sample and its translate by . If an equivariant estimator tolerated replacements, it would remain within bounded distance of both and , which is impossible as . Thus at most replacements are tolerable.
For , a sample with zeros and copies of is obtained from the all-zero sample by replacements and from the all- sample by replacements. Translation equivariance again forces breakdown by replacements. In both cases the finite-sample replacement breakdown point is at most