Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 205 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
For a diagonal entry, put . Independence and the given moment-generating function inequality for the chi-squared distribution giveThe Chernoff bound with yieldsApply the same argument to and sum the two tails:
To obtain the off-diagonal bound, set and . They are jointly normal with unit variances and covariance zero, so independence of uncorrelated jointly normal variables makes them independent standard normals. Since , the moment-generating function of the product of two independent standard normal random variables isFor , is a sum of independent such products. The given inequality implies for . Taking , and repeating for the negative tail, gives
Now take and . There are diagonal entries but only distinct off-diagonal entries, since is symmetric. By the union bound, the event has probability at leastThis is the required entrywise concentration of a Gaussian Gram matrix.
On that single event, any vector supported on at most coordinates satisfieswhere the last step is the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality on the support. If each have at most nonzero coordinates, has at most . The same entrywise event applies simultaneously to all of them, so no union over vectors is needed. The sparse norm preservation from entrywise Gram control givesThe printed ratio is undefined at . Its equivalent quadratic statement, , includes that case trivially. The nontrivial concentration argument assumes ; at the stated probability lower bound is nonpositive and hence vacuous.